


end the fight; before the fight ends you

by Neuron



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Billy Hargrove Tries to Be a Better Person, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, He does it wrong a lot first, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Injury Recovery, M/M, Not Season/Series 03 Compliant, Period-Typical Homophobia, Post-Season/Series 02, Redemption, Sibling Bonding, Slow Burn, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, eventually
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2020-01-12
Packaged: 2020-03-17 14:04:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 50,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18966736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neuron/pseuds/Neuron
Summary: Billy realised he was never going to beat his dad; but he could survive him. Or so he thought.OrWhen one minor misunderstanding spirals out of control and ends with a family outing to A&E Billy is forced to re-examine some of his views and relationships with those around him.The guy who he beat the shit out of last year and the monstersfrom another dimensionare not making it any easier.





	1. billy - part one

**Author's Note:**

> So here's the fic I started writing last year, got stuck, gave up, and now I'm back with some frantic attempt to finish it before S3 shafts me with 500 new ideas. Wish me luck.
> 
> Please keep an eye on the tags, there wont be anything too dark (I don't think?), but there will be some violence and use of slurs later on, but I will be keeping this to a minimal.

If there is one thing that Billy Hargrove knows for certain is that life can turn sour in a heartbeat. No warnings. No time to prepare or make a back-up plan. You’ve just got to roll with it to the best of your abilities and he likes to believe he’s gotten pretty good at improvising by now.

 It’s Saturday. No different to any other Saturday in shithole Hawkins, Indianna. He’d spent his morning on the couch watching TV before he dropped Max off at the Byer’s place in the afternoon; gifted with the news that she didn’t need a ride home. Great. He didn’t have to plan around her.

Not that he had many plans on the table but it was the principle.

He’d cruised around, picked up some smokes, bumped into Tommy and Carol outside Melvalds and hung out with the pair until Carol started getting frisky and Billy felt like he was third-wheeling. He’d returned home before it got dark, but late enough so he didn’t have to share dinner with Susan and his dad, and was fully prepared to spend the rest of the night shut in his room and doing his homework.

A pretty average day all in all.

He couldn’t have anticipated the onslaught that awaited him the second he closed the back door behind him.

It was all a blur really; his dad in his face, spewing words that Billy barely registered—too surprised to fully acknowledge—an unyielding grip on his upper arm marching him towards his bedroom and shoving him roughly inside.

That’s where he stands now, in his room that is undoubtedly messier than he’d left it earlier that day.

He’s swallows thickly taking in his sheets that were ripped from the bed and all his cassette cases emptied; their contents scattered across the floor. He worries, for a second, about the damage—his tapes being some of the most important things he owns—before the real danger of the situation hits him.

His dad had been in his room looking for something.

The panic that settles in his chest is silent and fast, dropping down into the gut and twisting his innards. While his heartrate picks up the pace, his mind completely blanks out. It’s not like Neil has never gone through his room before, but there’d been _reasons_ then. His dad found his cigarettes after smelling smoke in his room, and his pot after a nosy bitch of a neighbour spotted him at a nearby park smoking _what looked very much like pot, Mr Hargrove—_ because Billy was still too careless. This time, he doesn’t have the slightest idea what his dad had been searching for—what he might have found—because he’s given no impression that he had anything to hide.

“You’ve been stealing from me.”

 He spins, confusion and disbelief etched onto his features because _no_. No way in _hell_ is Neil accusing him of stealing. He’s done that _once_ and once had been enough. There are some lessons Billy learns very quickly and not to steal from his dad is one of them.

“What the hell dad?” He finds himself crying angrily, his defences rising abnormally quickly and his mouth taking leadership. “I haven’t stolen shit from you!”

“Watch how you speak to me boy.” Neil takes a step forward and Billy fights the urge to take one back. He’s already lost too much space to him. “And. Do not. _Lie_. To me.”

He takes another step and Billy braces himself, desperately attempting to reign in his temper before it spikes and lands him in deeper water. It’s hard—his senses on high alert and his heart hammering away in his chest—but he forces himself to pause, inhale, scrub the fury from his tone before answering. His hands are raised, palms outward. A gesture of surrender.

“Dad. I _honestly_ don’t know –“

He manages not to flinch when his dad’s hand comes up to silence him. He’s doing that thing with his jaw while he stares Billy down. _Look at my lying, disrespectful son_. He knows he’s breaching thin ice at this point so he keeps his mouth shut, tries not to focus on Susan—the frightened hen—lingering in the doorway, or track the movement of his dad’s hand lowering and sliding into his pocket.

Eyes forward. Breathe.

“It’s funny,” Neil says with a humourless chuckle, lips pressing together in a tight smile because it’s not funny really. _None_ of this is funny. “This morning $20 goes missing from my wallet. And then I find _this_ ,” a handful of folded bank notes are being waved in front of Billy’s face, “underneath _your_ mattress.”

Billy is sure his heart stops for a moment.

Neil dumps the money on his vanity dramatically and gestures at it. “Care to explain?”

And there’s no way he can explain because, _yes_ , that is his money and _yes_ , it was hidden suspiciously under his mattress, and there’s _definitely_ no way that Billy can admit he’s been selling a little pot here and there without sending his dad into a molten rage.

The fucked up thing is, Billy knows at this point that any clever excuses he comes up with won’t save his ass—not when Neil has already decided that Billy is in the wrong. There are no correct answers.

But he tries anyway.

“I didn’t ste—“

The punch to his face is not entirely unexpected but the strength behind it has him stumbling, unable to right his footing before hands seize his collar and force him backwards until his body slams against the door of his closet, rattling the woodwork.

Cornered.

Exactly where he _didn’t_ want to be.

“I _said._ Do not lie to me,” Neil hisses, one hand still fisted in his jacket and the other wrapped around his throat where his pulse flutters wildly. He’s sure he can feel it. Can probably hear his heart trying to crack his ribs too.

“Neil…”

Susan is in the room now, hovering somewhere just behind his father’s left shoulder. Billy doesn’t look at her; he’s not stupid enough to break eye contact with Neil.

He’s not stupid enough to steal his money either but apparently his intelligence doesn’t mean shit.

“Susan. Wait outside.”

His dad’s voice is cold. The fingers at his throat flex before digging in.

He fucking hates his dad’s eyes. Blue, sometimes grey depending on the light, but always cold and sharp and cradling a barely contained storm. He always gets right up close and personal, keeps his threats low, and Billy stills in fear of that storm breaking free. Experience has taught Billy many things. Don’t look away. Don’t show any pain or weakness. _Don’t cry_.

But also.

Don’t argue. Don’t fight back. _Don’t raise your hands._

Take the hits like a bitch but don’t cry like a bitch. Those are the rules, breaking any one of them could turn a bad situation downright nasty.

His head throbs from the first punch. He’ll be likely to receive another before this is over—maybe two—and some scathing words about what an absolute disgraceful fuck up he is, but so long as he follows the rules—apologizes at the right times—then with a bit of luck things won’t escalate any further than that tonight.

So his arms hang at his sides, his head tilted back and he forces his rigid body to go pliant under that grip despite his blood boiling just beneath his skin.  

It’s Susan who’s breaking the rules. He still not looking at her, but in his peripheral he sees her lay a hand on Neil’s arm.

Billy wishes she would just fuck off like the spineless bitch she is.

He also kind of wishes she would stay because Neil has _that_ _look_ in his eye and Billy knows this too from experience that being left alone with this man now means nothing good.

“Neil, he says he didn’t do it. Maybe—"

“Maybe what?” Neil cuts across her sharply but never once taking his eyes away from Billy’s, the question directed more towards him; daring him to lie to his face one more time.

His silence earns him a slap. Open palmed and it leaves his cheek stinging and eyes prickling in frustration.

“You repeatedly disrespect me.” He’s pulled forward roughly before being slammed back again and his head smacks against the closet.  “And now you’re going to stand here and refuse to take responsibility.”

Susan is stammering _something_ , some pointless words which won’t change the outcome, and Billy feels a new rush of anger towards her because she’s _supposed_ to just shut up, and just _what_ is she trying to prove?

“Your actions have consequences—“

He hates this part. The part where his dad explains to him exactly how he fucked up and why he deserves every shove, every slap, and every punch. He hates how each word from his mouth makes him tremble some more, suppressing his rage only increases his urge to cry, and either way he’s going to _lose_. Anger equals insolence. Crying means he’s a faggot. It’s a game Neil created in which he can never win.

“—And _God knows_ I’ve tried with you, Billy—“

A tingle runs through his nose, expanding to the backs of his eyes, and he wants to scrub at them; wipe away the dampness accumulating there. He blinks quickly, thinks he should just apologise, even if he resents himself for it, because it’s better than receiving yet another lecture about respect and responsibility.

“—roof over your head and clothes on your ungrateful back, but you’re never satisfied, are you? You always want more. I’ve been lenient—“

It’s not like he hasn’t heard any of this before. It’s the same words recited differently, recycled over many years, and Billy may even believe _some_ of them. He doesn’t believe Neil is lenient though. He has as much lenience as Billy has restraint.

 “—you seem determined to—“

With a choked and desperate bark of laughter Billy’s mouth moves of its own accord, cutting ties with his rationality. “Jesus, if you’re gonna hit me can you just hurry up and get it _over_ with?”

There’s a beat, right after Susan’s disbelieving gasp slices through the silence in the room, where Billy has time to acknowledge that he’s just made a terribly bad choice. He might not be stupid enough to steal money from Neil or break eye contact with him, but apparently he’s still too stupid to hold his tongue for more than 5 minutes.

The fingers around his throat tighten. Susan grasps his sleeve. “Neil!” She pleads like she can beg and sooth his anger away, but Neil is _pissed_ and he only releases Billy’s throat to _shove_ her away. She falls, maybe? He barely has time to register her startled yelp because Neil’s back on him, rearing his fist back and Billy shuts his eyes, braces, and thinks _it’ll all be over soon and life can go on._

He hears a _crack_ that reverberates through every bone in his body; a cold flood ripples across his face.

There’s a moment, after the fist connects and he’s falling sideways—hands scrambling at the shelves to catch himself—where everything seems to slow down, the light in his room too bright and he chases the flickering spots and swirls with his eyes, wavering in painless bewilderment, before the dots start connecting.

His teeth aren’t sitting right.

He thinks he tastes blood in his mouth.

When the pain comes seconds later it’s sharp and intense, lancing through his jaw and ear and then right up into his skull. His legs tremble, threatening to buckle, and his vision blurs; tears swimming to his eyes. He thinks, _don’t cry, for fucks sake!_ as if he hasn’t broken enough rules already.

Suddenly his scalp is burning, his hair trapped tight in Neil’s fist—dragging him back to full height, and then there’s a hand seizing his jaw, and

And Billy _screams._

Well, he _tries_ to scream. It’s what his every nerve in his body tells him to do, but the sound that erupts from his mouth is choked and wet because it turns out he does, in fact, have a mouthful of blood, and it’s spraying everywhere, all over his dad’s face and shirt.

His body spasms when he’s jerked forward.

He croaks, “ _let me go”_ but it sounds unintelligible to his own ears. He wrenches desperately at his dad’s wrists; needs the pain to just stop. “Dad, _please!_ ”

It’s unclear if anyone hears him; he can barely hear himself over the blood pounding in his ears and the piercing sting in his jaw making it hard to focus. Susan is screaming, high pitched and splitting his skull in half and Neil is _furious_ , tugging him in close so he can feel hot breath beating down on his burning face.

“ _Dad_ –“

“You _dare_ speak to me like that!”

If he wasn’t crying before he’s almost certain he is now. There’s pure disgust in Neil’s eyes, no guilt or remorse, no indication he cares that his son is writhing in pain. He needs to apologise, beg if he has to, but before he can try Neil abruptly releases him and he tumbles to the floor, landing heavily on his ass.

The room spins. He feels nauseous, like he’s drank too much, and he heaves on reflex, blood spilling through his open lips—shit he _can’t_ close his mouth—and dribbles down his chin. Blinking rapidly, he watches as his hand sluggishly tries to catch the blood, fascinated when it simply spills between his fingers and begins to blotch his jeans.

_“Stop it!”_

Billy wonders where all this blood is coming from.

He hopes his teeth are okay.

“ _STOP_! Leave him _alone_!”

“MAXINE!”

Billy blinks, jerks his head back, winces when he smacks the same sore spot on the closet _again_ , and tries to focus his eyes.

He sees a flash of red.

He sees Max.

He doesn’t recall her coming home let alone coming into his room.

Yet she’s here, like she just materialised out of thin air. Her fiery hair is wild, her face twisted in determination and she’s _pulling_ Neil—grappling with all her scrawny little might—away from him. Realistically she shouldn’t have been able to budge Neil even an inch but right now she resembled one of those little ankle-biter dogs. Those yappy ones that tear at your pants and don’t let go unless you’re willing to catapult them into the sun.

Her efforts come to a screeching halt when whatever little restraint Neil had left snaps, viciously ripping her hands from his shirt, and—for the first time since this shitty family came together—his open palm collides with Max’s soft cheek.

Susan—what the fuck has she even been doing—screams “ _NO!”_ and Billy, dumbstruck and still spitting blood into his awaiting hand, can only watch as his stupid little step-sister stops dead and touches her pink cheek, eyes wide and stunned.

It wasn’t the strongest slap. It _sounded_ bad but Neil could have knocked her through the window if he’d _really_ wanted to. But physical pain is only part of the aftermath. Billy remembers when he’d been much younger, more naïve, frozen in place and his face stinging from where Neil had struck him. Looking at his dad and thinking _you’re not supposed to do that_.  Sometimes that part had hurt more.

That had been a long ass time ago though and mostly forgotten.

But Billy recognises that now; the _shock,_ the _betrayal_. Because Neil may not be Max’s real dad but he had—wanted or not—situated himself as an authority figure in her life; someone who was looking out for her best interests even if she never asked nor appreciated it. And now that same man had slapped her once and once will _definitely_ become twice.

He can see dampness form in her eyes and there’s a cruel, bitter part of Billy’s mind that wants to laugh.

She thinks she had it bad before? With _him_. Ha. Neil is on a whole new playing field.

She’ll be begging to turn back the time soon enough.

Except.

She’s _not_ begging.

She’s not frozen. Not anymore.

The hilarity is blinked away and for one horrible second Billy is _scared_ for her. Her eyes are wet but _fierce_ and she lets out this furious shriek; fists clenched and, _oh my god_ , raised up as if she thinks— _what?_ —that she can pummel her way out of this? He’s seen that vehement resolve in her before, once when she held a spiked bat over him before swinging it between his legs and nearly wiping out any prospects of reproduction.

But she doesn’t have a bat _or_ a syringe filled with tranquilisers to subdue her opponent this time. She’s just a fourteen year old girl and Neil is going to _flatten_ her because disobedient brats _need to learn_.

But the second passes and it’s _Susan_ who is lurching forward _just_ in time before any physical contact is made, seizing Max with protective arms and forcing herself between her husband and their children.

“Enough!”

Her hand is held out, visibly shaking, but defiant, telling him to _stay back, stay away_. Meek little Susan. Staring down the man she married. “ _Enough_ Neil.” Her voice is trembling, her breath rattling out loud enough for everyone to hear.

“Susan –“

“No,” she cuts across him and Neil’s face twitches. Interrupted by a woman. “Neil. You need to _leave_.”

Ordered to leave his own home by a woman.

Billy is holding his breath as he stares at their backs, having spun themselves into the centre of Billy’s room; as if they were shielding him. He’s thinking he needs to get _up_ , because he’s certain Neil is going to explode. He’s going to hit Susan, and unlike Billy’s own mother who had a backbone and an attitude; Susan will _crumble_. Max will get it next. And then finally Billy will receive the worst of it.

Because obviously all of this is Billy’s fault.

Even though it was Susan who broke the rules first. _“How I discipline my son has nothing to do with you.”_ His father had made that very clear to her a long time ago, after the first time she saw him strike Billy and tried to reason with him. She was not to interrupt. But she did. She did and it only amplified Neil’s rage, inciting a stupid emotional reaction from Billy and consequently breaking one of his own rules.

If she’d have just _fucked off_ Neil would have just set about roughing him up and Billy could have kept his mouth shut and rolled with the punches and it would have all been settled without dirtying Max’s precious innocence.

Neil runs a hand over his moustache, a gesture Billy has seen him make countless times when he’s irate, his icy eyes boring into his wife’s, flickering over Max who is clutching her mom’s arm before finally settling on Billy.

He sees the tick in his jaw and Billy thinks _this is it_. But Neil doesn’t strike. He turns.

He _leaves._

His footsteps retreat away from Billy’s room and then the back door slams. Just like that. The room is filled with the shuddering sounds of Susan and Max’s heavy breathing. No one moves. Not until they hear the engine of his dad’s truck disappearing down the street and the breath Billy was holding is forced out of him, wet sounding and choked, and it’s like a spell has been broken. Susan flinches at the sound, her body turning slowly, first to face Max—her hand coming up to briefly cup her daughters reddened cheek—before she finally looks at Billy.

Billy who is still slumped against his wardrobe with his jaw hanging open unable to close it. Billy who is still cradling a puddle of blood to his chest and can feel the sticky wetness beginning to congeal on his chin.

Billy who stares back, rendered dumb with shock, at these two skinny redheads who—in a matter of minutes—had managed to chase away the monster that has been tormenting him all his life.

Susan approaches him tentatively, nervously wringing her hands as she crouches beside him.

“Let me see.” She says quietly, her voice a shadow of a whisper, and Billy isn’t quite sure what she’s trying to _see_ but assumes it has something to do with his mouth. His face feels _huge_ and he _could_ get up and look in his mirror but he probably doesn’t _want_ to if the disturbed expression on Max’s face is anything to go by.

Slow and hesitant, Susan reaches out and gently presses her fingertips along his jawline. Billy hisses and scrunches his eyes shut when the dull throb of pain intensifies with the pressure, blindly attempting to bat her hand away.

“Max. Go and get… get some ice and a towel. Please.”

He barely hears Max leave, too focused on trying to get the pain and his breathing under control.

“I think it’s broken. Your jaw. I think.”

Billy peels his eyes open at her whisper.

Susan’s lip is clenched between her teeth, her expression strained and eyes wet as she waits for Billy to process her words.

Billy fleetingly wonders if those unshed tears are for him before the thought makes him snigger and then he’s groaning as pain shoots through his face again.

Right.

Broken jaw.

Max is back in the room, wordlessly handing over the ice already wrapped to her mom and then it’s being pressed to his face, the pain sharp and blinding and Susan’s face slips out of focus as he jerks away again

“ _Fuck_ ,” he moans, eyebrows pinched in agony and Susan is saying “you need … for the swelling … … your keys?”

He fixes her with a glare and her mouth clamps shut before he tugs the homemade ice-pack from her hands and places it gingerly against his cheek, wincing at the unceasing ache. It might hurt like a bitch but if it _is_ broken then he knows he needs to reduce the swelling. Need to stay pretty; his face is one of his best assets after all.

“Billy?” Susan’s looking at him all concerned. “Your car keys?”

Yep. He has car keys. For his car.

“I need to drive you to the hospital,” she clarifies slowly, like Billy is dumb. He blinks at her, his free hand shifting to the pocket on his leather jacket feeling the bulge that he recognises as his keys. He doesn’t retrieve them, but Susan nods affirmatively, her hand clasping his arm. “Okay. I need—can you stand?" As if Billy is a cripple. And then he’s struggling on heavy and uncooperative limps, pushing his weight— _Christ_ , did he always weigh this much?—from the ground; blinking rapidly when his room tilts. He uses the wall in attempt to steady himself, rocking back on his heels and Susan scrambles to right him.

“M’fine,” he slurs, his tongue taking up too much space in his mouth and his bottom lip tingling; Susan just smiles weakly. And then he’s being coaxed gently through the house and out the back door; the steps down to the drive feeling treacherous and he grips the rail tight. It’s darker out now, the sun having set and its last dying rays silhouetting the trees in the distance. He breathes deep, swallowing down gulps of the crisp night air and hopes it’ll help settle his head.

It doesn’t help much, black flecks spotting his vision by the time he manages to wobble over to his car, and he readily drops into the awaiting seat when Susan pulls open the door for him. He needs a moment to just breathe and adjust the ice on his aching jaw. His doors shut and after a moment the other one opens and there’s quiet mutterings and fumbling and when Billy reopens his eyes he realises he’s in the passenger side and next to him Susan is messing around, altering the position of the driver’s seat; his keys clutched in her pale, bony hand.

He didn’t even notice her swiping them.

He wants to protest but she’s already starting the engine, the Camaro’s growl rumbling through the interior and making Billy’s head swim. He doesn’t _like_ being a passenger and he’s certainly never been a passenger in his own car—his _baby_. Susan isn’t even a great driver—Neil always carted her around, or she got the bus—and she looks completely put out by Billy’s big muscle car; almost stalling before they even get off the drive.

The ride is quiet. Susan gnaws at her inner cheek, hands clenched around the wheel and looking pointedly ahead. Behind them Billy is aware of Max’s uneasy breathing and notes that the way he’s staring at Susan is probably making them both super uncomfortable.

 _Good_ , he thinks even as his head lolls away from them, turning towards his window and watching the streetlights flicker by at frequent intervals. He catches sight of himself in the wing mirror, his face illuminated briefly enough for him to see his jaw jutting unnaturally to the right and his chin streaked deep red. He tears his eyes away and tries to count the streetlights they pass. It becomes almost hypnotic, the light flashing over him followed by seconds of dark sky and darker trees that make up most of Hawkins’ long roads.

He wonders where his dad drove off to.

Wonders if he’ll be back by the time they return from the hospital.

Neil usually gives him a bit of a break after these heavier poundings. Sometimes he even gives Billy money—he’s not going to pin his hopes on that since Neil seems to think he’s a thief anyway but this is potentially a _broken jaw_. That should earn him a few weeks—maybe a month or more if he’s particularly lucky—where Neil will rein in his temper just enough to avoid any more physical damage. That’ll be nice. Something to look forward to.

 

 

He barely notices when they pull up at the hospital, his body moving more on instinct than command, following Susan—who actually _tries_ to take his fuckin’ hand—across the parking lot on shaky legs. The lights in the reception of A&E blind him and he rocks mid-step, shutting his eyes and trying to shake away the dizziness.

A hand touches his lower back, so brief he thinks he may have imagined it had it not urged him forwards. He hears a gasp from the receptionist and his eyes rolls. A broken jaw can’t really be that startling can it? But then again, it’s a Saturday night and there appears to be about 3 people in the waiting room.

Jesus. Hawkins is dull.

He’s ushered into chair, someone—a nurse?—flaps around, asking questions that Susan stammers to answer. Assault. Yes. About forty minutes ago. Billy thought it was longer. He blinks and there’s a new figure and he’s being asked to tilt his head back.

“Where is the pain most prominent?” Billy gestures vaguely to the area he’s been holding the ice to.

“Can you open your mouth more for me?” He fucking _tries_ to, scrunching his eyes shut as a gruelling, unrelenting pain spikes sharply through his skull, a wounded noise crawling up his throat and breaking free. The person—doctor—urges his head back and Billy squints through damp lashes, sees a small flashlight and the man’s frowning face close to his own.

“The bleeding seems to have stopped,” he hums thoughtfully, pulling away from Billy, placing the flashlight in his pocket and addressing Susan and whoever that other person is. “I’ll need to do a physical and an x-ray.”

Across from him, partially hidden behind the doctor, Max stands awkwardly with her arms wrapped around protectively around herself; her cheek glowing red under the sharp artificial lights.

Shit.

He forgot that Neil slapped her too.

She catches him staring, gives him this look that he can’t read. It’s not concern—not that Billy expected that for a moment—but it’s not seeped in the usual amount of dislike or caution that Billy is accustomed to. It’s only there for moment before the doctor shifts and blocks her from his view, and then Billy is shifted into a wheelchair—his weak and whiny attempts of protest ignored by everyone—and he’s whisked away; bumped straight to the top of the priority list.

 

 

When he next sees Susan and Max, Billy has been blessed with pain medication. Susan pulls the curtain shut behind them and they stand uneasily at the foot of the hospital bed he’s lying on.

“How do you feel?” Susan asks eventually, then—appearing embarrassed—she adds, “can you talk?” And Billy wants to sneer and say something sarcastic but honestly, he _tried_ speaking with one of the nurses who set him up in bed and he sounded like an idiot, so he settles for an ambiguous shrug that answers nothing. Cautious but undeterred, Susan creeps towards the chair situated closest to his head and takes a seat; Max following her hesitantly with her hands clasped in her lap. He watches her through half-lidded eyes though she refuses to meet his gaze, focusing instead on the needle inserted into the crook of his elbow and the sticky pads stuck to his bare chest.

The nurses had had to cut his top off. It was a fitted white t-shirt with a tight collar and they hadn’t wanted to risk jostling his face by pulling it over his head so out came the scissors and _snip, snip_ , there went Billy’s shirt. He _liked_ that shirt, he would’ve fought harder for its safety had he not been desperate for the promised pain meds. He swears he was waiting _hours_ for relief.

From reception he’d been taken for an examination where he was cleaned up and his doctor—whose name he had not cared to remember—inspected his face and began prodding his jawbone through his skin like Billy _wasn’t_ in excruciating pain. He’d asked, “ _can you close your mouth?_ ” Billy could, barely, but not without grimacing. He’d asked, “ _does your chin or lower lip feel numb?_ ” And Billy nodded, hoping that that wasn’t a bad thing. A flat, wooden stick had been placed between his teeth, falling back out almost immediately and the doctor made a “ _hmm”_ sound and Billy figured it was probably bad.

He had been stripped of his jacket, necklace, and earring and taken for an x-ray before being wheeled—with exhausted reluctance but no real fight this time—to a ward to await his doctor’s verdict.

“The doctor told me they’ve got a specialist on call. He’s coming to look at your x-rays,” Susan is saying. Most of Billy’s comprehension has floated away with the drugs flooding his system and what’s left of him is still in pain and not at all interested in hearing Susan speak but she doesn’t seem to get the memo. “You _might_ need surgery.” She gnaws at her lip. “It’s not certain yet.”

She looks guilty. Nothing like his dad in these situations. Neil had a talent for this part—the _my son is a trouble-causer_ routine—tattling off lies about falls and schoolyard fights whenever Billy’s head bounced off the wall too hard, and no one ever doubted it because Neil Hargrove was a respectable, hard-working man, and Billy was, well—just _look_ at Billy. He had delinquent written all over him.

And it’s not like Billy ever denied it.

The nurses had asked but he’d just shrugged, rolled his eyes, and slurred “ _got_ _ssslug’d pretty ‘ard”_ as if wasn’t _obvious_. Susan could have the guilty task of picking out their cover story this time.

“And. Um. Chief Jim Hopper is here.”

Wait. What?

His head lolls over, face scrunching up in a frown, and Susan fumbles with the sleeves of her cardigan, her gaze flickering from him to random points of the room. “He’ll want to speak with you at some point. Not _now—_ but. When you’re feeling up to it.”

She gives him this weak barely-there smile as she trails off; attempting to offer up strength she clearly doesn’t have.

Billy just stares at her. Max is picking at her cuticles, a quiet clicking, deafening in the silence between them.

A sliver of apprehension needles the back of his skull; his eye twitches. Chief Hopper is here. He can take a good guess what that means.

He feels like he should be mad. Like really pissed. Because Billy would rather fight his way out, brandishing his IV stand like a spear, than speak to a cop. That’s another one of Neil’s rules—one which Billy had never struggled to obey—no cops. It might’ve crossed his mind briefly here and there—the satisfaction of imaging cuffs slapped onto Neil’s wrists; manhandled into the back of a police car—before reality comes knocking and he’s reminded that without his dad he has nowhere to go.

Without his dad he has no one.

It’s a little unsettling when he just feels lethargic. Apathetic even. This is a problem for Future Billy. Present Billy is too tired, too doped up to care; the drugs constructing a retaining wall between reality and his mind. He’s content to just float languidly on the other side, it’s been a long and stressful night and he thinks he deserves this at least. Later, tomorrow maybe, when he’s fixed up and sober he’ll do all the screaming and swearing that’s necessary to make the pigs trot away. Shouldn’t be _too_ difficult; authority figures never take much liking to him. There’s only so much of his attitude that they can take before they’ll come to the conclusion that Billy probably needs a smack around the mouth or two to straighten him out.

He doubts Chief Hopper will be much different, even if he does seem to be on familiar terms with Max; he already has a fairly low opinion of Billy since he cracked open Steve Harrington’s pretty face. If he’s persistent then Billy can improvise. He’s good at that.   

For now, he’s resigned to closing his eyes and sinking into his pillow, deliberately ignoring that shard of anxiety—buried deep and armed with a pickaxe—chipping away at the dam with every _click, click, click_ of Max’s nails.

 

 

He must have fallen asleep.

He doesn’t remember drifting off but when he blinked his eyes open, Susan and Max were gone and there was new figure next to his bed.

Doctor Edwards— _Oral Surgeon_ , as he introduced himself—talks a lot for someone who was probably looking forward to a good night’s sleep only an hour or so ago. He shows Billy his x-rays, points to a dark angular line near the bottom left of his skull while firing off some medical jargon that mostly slips right over Billy’s drug hazed brain. But he gets the picture. His jaw— _mandible_ —is fucked basically.

“In most jaw fractures we would screw a small metal plate inside the gum to hold the bone together,” Dr Edwards says with his finger in Billy’s mouth. “However, yours is too close to the joint for this method.” He removes his hands and strips off his gloves. “In order for it to heal correctly we’ll need to immobilize your jaw for part of the recovery period.”

Billy swallows, the taste of latex sticking to his tongue. “Immobuhlize?”

“Your upper and lower jaw will be wired shut—“Billy isn’t sure what his face does, can’t feel most of it through the swelling, but Edwards chuckles at him. “Now, it’s not as bad as it _sounds_. You’ll have metal bars attached to your teeth—not too dissimilar from braces—and they’ll be joined together with wires—“

Billy doesn’t know what part of that isn’t supposed to sound bad.

Billy has _great_ teeth. ‘Surprising considering he’s smoked since he was thirteen and has been taking punches even longer. His mom, despite her questionable parenting, always drilled into him the importance of oral hygiene, and even after her death he still brushes them, twice a day, flosses too—even though his dad calls him girl for it. Like taking good care of your teeth is something only women should do. Which is bullshit, because Billy knows that a good smile with the right amount of charm can win over just about anybody.

He has a _practised_ smile. Time spent staring in the mirror perfecting the curl of his lips and flick of his tongue over his pearly whites.

And now Doctor Edwards wants to wrap that smile up in metal.

“—be able to talk just fine, but you will, of course, have to follow a strict liquid diet. Soups, broths, smoothies, protein shakes. No alcohol—“

“How ‘ong?”

“It varies. Given there are no complications you will probably be looking at four to six weeks.”

_Jesus._

 

 

Max is absent when Susan returns. Which is a blessing really because Billy is high as a kite and naked beneath the white sheets pooling around his waist. He exposes himself twice; twisting the sheets around his legs trying to get comfortable while Susan flails about trying to cover him up.

“-Er gonna sew m’ mowth up,” he groans pathetically.

“They’re not going to sew your mouth up.”

She sounds tired. He’s not sure how long he’s they’ve been at the hospital; everything after that last punch blurred together, and Billy is pretty sure time stopped existing altogether after the drugs hit his system. It could be next Thursday for all he knows. Susan looks like she’s aged 10 years. Paler than her usual pale, lines around her eyes that Billy never recalled seeing before.

“Gonna fuck m’ teeth’up.”

“Billy—“

“Your teeth will be fine.”  A nurse titters from his side and Billy tries to glare at her, his efforts ruined when Susan wipes drool off his chin with a napkin. He scowls at the ceiling instead. “Are you ready?” He grunts. Susan gives his hand a squeeze.

“You’ll be fine. It’ll be over before you know it.”

Funnily enough, that’s not what worries him the most. He’s not scared of the procedure. Not even when he’s wheeled into theatre and Doctor Edwards—dressed in scrubs and a surgical mask—injects him with a local anaesthetic. _Count back from ten_. He’s not afraid of going under, but of what awaits him when he wakes up.

He’s asleep by six.

 

 

Consciousness grasps him for only a second or two. His face feels bloated. His jaw stiff.

He thinks— _where the FUCK is my tongue?!—_ before promptly passing out again.

 

 

He’s awake properly now. And in a whole shit-heap of pain.

He still has his tongue though. That’s one upside. His teeth are also aligned again.

Well and truly fucking aligned and securely _locked together_.

It’s worse than he thought it would be. His whole face aches, bruised and swollen on the outside; gums tender and aching. Even if he was coherent enough to string together a sentence; he can’t talk. The nurses tell him it’ll get easier once the swelling subsides but for now he’s limited to barely intelligible grunts and groans.  

The day slips by in slow agony, pumped full of drugs and propped up by two large plump pillows, nurses checking in on him occasionally, bringing him water and asking how he’s feeling. He responds like a wounded animal, glaring at them for asking such a stupid question. He feels like they wheeled him into the surgery room and beat with whatever equipment they had lying around.

They suggest that he tries to eat several times but he shrugs them away, nausea swirling in his belly, he sips tentatively at his water through a plastic straw and scrunches his eyes up; wishing he could just go back to sleep and wake up when the pain and sickness has passed.

_“We can’t release you until the doctor says you’re fit enough, and that won’t happen unless you eat.”_

The thing about eating with a wired jaw is that he’s not really _eating_. The process involves a cup of tomato soup, a long plastic syringe, and a fucking bib around his neck; splotched with red by the time he finishes.  Kind of like his face. Heat resting on his cheeks, weakness in his bones. Tomato soup swirls around heavy in his stomach. They said if he vomits they may need to cut the wires to prevent him from choking. The thought of prolonging his stay forces him to breathe through the nausea.

If he’s going to have to suffer this humiliation for four to six weeks he’d rather do it in the privacy of his own room.

 “Your step-mom is here to see you.”

“ _Nnnghh_.”

To give Susan credit, she doesn’t try to force conversation. She does a lot of sitting and fidgeting, looking as uncomfortable as he feels. Her hair is scrapped into a messy ponytail, cardigan replaced with a worn but comfortable sweater that covered her hands; she looks like she barely slept. His surgery was in the early hours of the morning, he figures she must have gone home at some point, but she makes no mention of it; skirting around the subject of his dad and other sensitive topics. She tells him Max is with the Byers’. Not that he asked, or cared for that matter.  She stays for a couple of hours spent mostly in silence, sipping on cheap coffee, until visiting hours end and Billy is dozing. He just about feels her squeeze his bicep as she leaves.

 

 

After some prodding and questioning, Billy gets the _good-to-go_ from Doctor Edwards at noon on Monday. It comes with an ample list of _dos_ and _don’ts_ , pamphlets on nutrition and liquid diets, and a paper bag packed with medication. It all washes over Billy’s head, too tired and too eager to leave, but Susan soaks it all up for him; nods her head attentively and asks questions where she’s unsure.

After a night of broken sleep he’d discovered keeping his food down was a lot easier if he lay off the drugs. Not a decision easily made considering the agonizing throb pulsing through the lower half of his face which only worsened as time went on. The flipside, however, meant that his stomach stopped rebelling against him long enough to eat several small meals. Throughout the course of the morning he’d impressed the nurses by swallowing down two protein shakes, chicken broth, and a blended banana—which tested his gag reflex but fortunately nothing more.

The possibility of being discharged made the pain worth it. Just about anyways. He could manage a few more hours, he’d told himself encouragingly.

Chief Hopper had taken that moment to step past his curtain.

_“Listen, I know you’re in pain so I’m not going to grill you, alright. But I want you to know I picked your dad last night, and I can only hold him for three days without pressing charges. I’m not—I’m not trying to pressure you or anything. With what your step-mom and sister told me I can probably get a restraining order. But it you want to take this further—then I’m going to need to take a statement from you.”_

It’s funny how out of all of that the first thing Billy picked up on was that Susan and Max really _had_ snitched on his fucking dad. He’d started to believe he might’ve dreamed that bit up; too distracted by his current misery, he hadn’t paused to think about much else. He stared dumbly at the _Chief of fucking police_ for somewhat close to a minute, waiting for the clogs and gears in his head to start turning again.

_“Where was ‘e?”_

_“What?”_

_“My dad.”_ He swallowed, tongue dry. _“Where was he?”_

Hopper’s brow furrowed. _“At a bar.”_ Billy just nodded _. “Look, I’ll contact you later in the week, but the sooner we can talk—”_

_“—thanks for your concern, Chief, but I’m gonna pass.”_

_“Pass?”_

_“Pass. Opt out or whatever.”_

_“And, you’re, fine with that? Just going to let him walk back in?”_

_“I can deal.”_

Hopper hadn’t looked the slightest bit convinced. It’s a police face that Billy’s seen before on previous encounters with the law. _Don’t bullshit me, son_. They use it even when you’re not bullshitting. Which Billy had been but that wasn’t the point. It doesn’t work on him anyway. He knows how to bend the truth, also knows when to keep his mouth firmly shut. Not that he needs help with that for the time being.

Hopper had surprised him though. Said something Billy hadn’t anticipated.

_“Yeah but it’s not just about you now either. He hit your sister too. Think about that.”_

Billy tries real hard _not_ to think about that. He doesn’t want to think about precious little Maxine and her cheek—blazing red like her hair—or her water-lined eyes as she furiously pounded her tiny fists into Neil’s arm. The words _she’s not my sister_ had rolled off his tongue and Hopper had given him this _look_ , sucked his gums with raised eyebrows. Billy repeated those words to himself long after he left.

 _She’s not my sister_. _She’s not my problem_.

Except she was— _is_ —and had been for a long time. Look after Max. Drive Max around. Keep Max out of trouble because whatever she does will inevitably land back on him.

Fucking bitch.                                                                        

Still. It makes his guts knot uncomfortably. Makes him sink down in the wheelchair provided for him (he’s perfectly fucking capable of walking to the parking lot but they _insisted_ ) and stare at the white tiles as he's rolled over them. The post-fight routine with his dad is always kind of weird, even after so many years; he usually holes up in his room—on edge—slipping out here and there to deduce Neil’s temperament. Retreating if he feels static in the air. Normality always resumes soon enough.

This isn’t one of their standard fights though. This is a whole load of _new_ for both of them, and Billy isn't a fan of unforeseen change. He kind of hopes that restraining order works. Wouldn’t wager on it, but, it’d be _nice_ , he guesses, to let his face heal up without that his dad breathing down his neck.

His Camaro is parked close to the door, neatly situated between the white markings with precision Billy wouldn’t have cared for. He bets it took Susan more than three attempts to line it up properly. He climbs bitterly into the passenger seat and Susan thanks the nurse in his stead. He’s in no condition to drive, he knows that, but being seated in his car without the wheel and pedals in front feels foreign and wrong.

His stomach churns when the engine revs— contents bubbling under heavy vibrations—and the dregs of his appetite evaporate. He swallows down a little bile; winces when his jaw gives a throb of protest. He’s definitely taking some of the stronger painkillers as soon as they get back.

“I bet you’re happy to be going home.”

He doesn’t grant her with a response. Just rolls his eyes over her bony hands gripping the wheel, frail wrists that look like might snap every time they turn a corner. He remembers one of those hands held in the air. A feeble defiance—weak and trembling like the woman it was attached to—trying to shelter against a storm with a broken umbrella. Like trying to tell a tiger _no_.

It shouldn’t have worked.

He huffs and turns his face away, glaring sourly at his feet instead. Susan looks fucking ridiculous driving his car.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Please leave a review!
> 
> Tumblr @cherry-toxic
> 
> (Title taken from Hatebreed's _Before the Fight Ends You_


	2. max - part one

After moving to the other side of the country and stumbling into what seemed a supernatural-slash-horror story; Max Mayfield was pretty sure there was nothing that could truly surprise her anymore. Her entire world had been shook in a single night. She’d discovered the existence of the Upside Down and faced the monsters that crawled out of it. She met a girl with superpowers and stood up to a step-brother who treated her like his verbal punch bag.

And she’d _survived_.

She’d come out the other side shaken, and for months afterwards she occasionally saw things in the trees and shadows that weren’t really there. But time, and support from those who had made Hawkins feel like home, had slowly chased off the worst of her nightmares.

Today had been another one of those days. Mrs Byers’ cheerful face and the sound of her friends chatter and laughter; Dustin teasing Mike for sulking over El not being there. The way Lucas looked at her in that way that made her stomach flutter a little and how she had tried to hide her smile and blush but he saw it anyway.

Life is _good_ , in a way that she never could have anticipated within Hawkins. She’s settled—content—ready for summer and high school in the fall. And if the world wants to try and end again, well—they’ll take care of it. Together. She’s sure of that.

It’s creeping close to 8pm when she’s climbs out of Jonathon’s car, thanks him for the ride, and offers a final smile and wave over her shoulder as she practically skips up the front path.

She hears Neil’s voice just as her hand reaches for the door, heated and threatening, and she scowls, glances at the window to her right—Billy’s room—and immediately knows that their going at it. Again.

As quietly as she can, she inches the door open and slips inside, determinedly ignoring whatever intense lecture Billy is receiving this time. Neil’s voice is louder and clearer now, the bedroom door wide open.  She _wouldn’t_ have looked—honest—it’s far from the first time they’ve played out this routine and she knows her role by now; avert her eyes and keep walking like the good girl she’s expected to be. Go to her room, block it out, it’ll be over eventually. And she’s _fine_ with that because she’s not about to let them ruin her good mood.

But then she hears her mom’s cry _“Neil!”_ —desperate, _scared_ even—and Max pivots on the spot.

There’s barely enough to time to take in the disarray of the room, because Neil is _shoving_ her mom, one-handed and thoughtless like she’s nothing more than a rag-doll, sending her staggering backwards into the shelf next to Max; Billy’s dartboard crashes to the floor.

Max blinks—her mouth a perfect _“o”_ shape—hears the solid impact of a fist meeting flesh, and Billy falls too.

She feels like she’s moving in slow motion, it’s taking too long for the air to leave her lungs; one, two, three, four, five—still deflating. Nobody even notices she’s there. Neil’s hand is fisted in Billy’s hair, grabbing his dirty blonde curls and pulling him upright. It’s graceless and uncoordinated, his legs scrambling uselessly and eyes scrunched shut in distress. When is face is grabbed by Neil’s meaty hand; Billy lets out one of the most gut-wrenching noises Max has ever heard, so broken and abrasive, almost animal, and she’s takes a step back fearfully—digging her fingers into the doorframe—before she sees blood spitting from Billy’s mouth, two stray tears dripping down his cheeks—the room filled with his tormented cries.

She thinks it will stop. It _has_ to stop. Because you don’t keep hitting someone who looks and sounds like that. Unless you’re Billy. But Billy isn’t the attacker here; he’s the _attacked_ and

“You _dare_ speak to me like that!”

The fine hairs on her arm stand on end, Neil’s growl, low and packed with deadly promise. _Nobody tells me what to do_. She’s feels a stab of deja-vu. Horror and fear prickling up her spine, her fingertip tingling—itching to grab something, _anything_ , but they remain weightless as she curls them into fists.

She’s a whole load of confused. Never thought she could feel so much anguish for _Billy_. But she _can’t_ —she doesn’t want to see another person get brutalized in front of her eyes.

She doesn’t question it further. No prompts or script to follow. Her legs move on their own accord with no thought towards her own wellbeing.

Neil has about an inch on Billy; so he towers well over her. Her fists slam into his back ineffectively, neither a word nor a glance spared, she tries harder, beats against his spine and ribs, tears at his shirt, until Neil jerks, dropping Billy and whirling around; eyes ablaze and hard lines etched deep on his forehead. Max doesn’t care for his angry face or her mom screaming her name. She’s yelling over them—“ _stop it! Stop! Leave him alone!”_ —angry and desperate and eyes growing wet in sheer frustration—just how much more screwed up could her family be? How do they think this normal?

She plants her feet firmly into the floor, digging in her heels for leverage, and _pulls_ at Neil’s shirt with every ounce of strength she can muster, writhing against his attempts to dislodge her with nothing but sheer will supporting her.

She doesn’t see Neil’s hand, doesn’t brace for the slap she never expected to come.

Her heads whips to the right, hands losing their grip and feet tripping over one another as she stumbles, a cassette crunching under her sole.

She manages to stay upright—barely—her ears ringing and static crackling in her skull.

Slowly, she touches her throbbing cheek, hot and tender beneath her clammy fingers.

_He hit me_. Her eyes flick back to Neil. _You hit me_.

For a second she thinks she sees a hint of regret. But it’s snuffed out, shuttered behind the cold stone of Neil’s gaze, flattened between the thin line of his lips. The muscles in his face grow tight, nostrils flaring; that ugly moustache twitches and Max wants to tear it off.

An unfathomable wave of betrayal crashes over her, hatred stabbing deep in her heart—overthrowing what little love she had for Neil in an instant. Her eyes burn with tears, but her veins burn hotter with fury, overriding her flight response and stubbornly opting for _fight_.

Later, when she replays these short seconds over in her head, she’ll freak out and pull at her hair, picturing all the ways it could have blown up in her face—Neil’s large hands, his unremorseful expression, Billy bleeding on the floor behind him—all the _what-if’s_ whispering in her ear.

Presently, she shrieks furiously when her mom seizes her, kicking her feet in the air and straining against the arms restraining her. Never has she wanted to hurt someone so badly for her own sake.

“Enough!”

It’s her mom’s voice, slicing through the mist and clearing her vision just enough to she see her hand thrown out towards Neil. Sees it shaking along with the rest of her body hugging her close protectively. “ _Enough_ Neil,” she says loud and clearly but afraid. Max stops fighting, grasps the arm wrapped around her and trembles with the energy it takes to keep herself still. Still shuddering, she glowers at Neil, hopes he can read the heat in her eyes and the lines on her forehead, but he’s not looking at her.

“Susan—“

“No. Neil. You need to _leave_.”

Max never thought Neil had a kind face. Never saw what his mom saw him in. Their relationship left an unpleasant taste in her mouth, made her heart ache for her dad and the days they’d once spent together at the beach as a family. Their marriage had initially deepened her bitterness, but time spent under the same roof built routine and familiarity—however reluctant—and once they moved to Hawkins Max’s feelings shifted. Billy became the enemy and consequently took the bulk of her resentment. There was still enough left for her to dislike Neil, but he almost became a saving grace in some respects, clicking his fingers and bringing Billy to heel, enough for her to find freedom and friends outside those four walls they called a home.

Neil might not have a kind face, but Max never figured he could look quite so terrifying. His eyes only briefly scan her, settling instead over her shoulder to where she can hear Billy’s ragged breathing. The scathing look he sends Billy is enough to make her tense, breath-hitching, certain he’s about snap, and Max feels a strong impulsive need to shield Billy from such a hateful stare, even if it means she has to step into firing range.

The thought confuses her and she’s grateful she doesn’t have the time to think on it. When Neil moves Max can’t help but jerk, half prepared to throw herself at him with swinging fists, but astonishingly he turns away from them and stalks out the door without a word. She holds her breath, listening to the sound of his boots storming across the house, hardly daring to believe that it might be over. Her mom flinches when the back door slams shut, arms tightening around her, and Max squeezes her wrist, unsure if she’s trying to be reassuring or just to anchor herself.

Distantly she can hear Neil’s pick-up fading away until there’s nothing but the sound of three rattling breaths, synchronised with the same waning adrenaline and fright. Nobody moves. Not until Billy coughs and Max and her mom both jump, releasing their grip on one another. She only remembers that her cheek is still stinging after her mom gently touches it, guilt stained on her features, and Max attempts a smile—barely manages a weak twitch of her lips—brushing away her concern as soon she feels that sweeping prickle behind her eyes. She’s _not_ going to cry.

Her mom ushers over to Billy and—oh shit—his _face_. Max’s eyes go wide. His jaw looks— _deformed_ , jutting out to the side unnaturally. He’s staring at them with astonishment, his complexion white as a sheet, as if he’d just witnessed a demodog for the first time. Under different circumstances, it might’ve been funny, but the blood congealing on his chin isn’t amusing.

Strange.

Not long ago Max would have gotten some pleasure out of seeing Billy get knocked down a peg or ten.

She looks down at her hands, realises they’re shaking; she locks her fingers together to try and calm them.

When asked, she gets ice and a dishtowel from the kitchen, thankful to have something to do rather than watch Billy whimper. It’s uncomfortable, now that the worst has passed and the adrenaline is fading. She shifts her weight, tucks her hands beneath her armpits, bites her lip nervously when Billy tries and fails to string together a coherent sentence. Neil seems to have taken the storm with him but now the house feels too quiet and tense and Max keeps looking over her shoulder at the door, half fearing that he’ll come bursting back in to rain down hell on them. She thinks about her cheek, overheated and throbbing, and Billy’s jaw. She’s no doctor but it doesn’t take a genius to know it’s broken or dislocated or something.  

She brings her thumb to her mouth, taking the nail between her teeth and chews on it nervously. They don’t—they won’t stand a chance if Neil tries to really hurt them. She already feels weaker, more tired and on edge. She has no love for hospitals, but she’s more than ready to leave when her mom manages to encourage Billy to his feet and out the house—wants to be somewhere where Neil can’t immediately find them. Somewhere with people.

 

 

Max discovers—after over three hours of hard plastic chairs and endless _are you okay’s_ —that she just wants everyone to go away. There’s too many eyes on her. Under the harsh artificial lights her cheeks glows red and angry—a beacon signalling abuse—and it earns her sad, pitying glances from everyone who passes her hunched figure. She tries to keep her head down, dodging their worry because it reminds her just how small and vulnerable she really feels; unable to reignite the fire that had coursed through her earlier. It fizzled out some time during the drive to the hospital; suffocated by silence. A blanket of anxiety and doubt had slowly draped itself over her shoulders in its stead; weighing heavy and filling her head full of unwelcome thoughts, trapping her in nightmarish cycle reliving the past from the moment she’d stepped out of Jonathon’s car.

Neil had hit her. He’d hit Billy.

_Billy_.

She’d been unable to look him for too long. It was too… _wrong_ —him lying there with his wrecked face and an abnormally vulnerable glint to his eyes.

The way he’d turned sullen and stiff when her mom mentioned Hopper.

She remembers how the nurse had asked, _“would you like us to get the police involved?”_ and how her mom had _hesitated_ , and she buries her nails—chewed down and stinging—into her palms.

“How you holding up, kid?”

She shrugs her shoulders wordlessly.

“About as good as to be expected then.” Hopper drops into the chair next to her and hands her a soda.

“I guess,” she murmurs and takes it, still cold from the vending machine. She wants to press it against her cheek but knows it could potentially trigger more questions over her wellbeing, and she’s fed-the-fuck-up of answering those.

After Billy was admitted, her mom insisted on having her face looked over by a nurse. Max had fought it, insisting she wasn’t hurt, and she felt like she was wasting everyone’s time when taken against her will for a quick examination. It was just a slap. It hardly mattered after everything else she’s witnessed.

She’d huffed an annoyed _I told you so_ afterwards, but her mom continued to fuss, kept repeating _I’m so sorry_ and _I shouldn’t have let this happen_ , and stroking her hair like she’d almost _died_.

There’s only so many time she can say _I’m fine_ before it begins to sound lifeless.

“The specialist’s in with your step-brother now—thinks he’s gonna need surgery.” Max nods vacantly, unsurprised—she’d overheard the first doctor mentioning that to her mom. A broken jaw. It looked messy enough, and they’d had Billy on some pretty strong painkillers when she last saw him. He’d done a lot of staring too, frowning at her with unfocused eyes like she was a great unsolvable mystery. She opted to sit out in the corridor with the pity stares instead. “He’s gonna be here a while regardless. I’m going to drop you off at Joyce’s—I’ve already spoken to her—“

“It’s nearly midnight.”

“Like I said, I already rang her. She’s up.”

“Why can’t we just go home?” Max asks. She’s not trying to be argumentative; she’s just not sure she can deal with anyone else tonight.

“Your mom wants to stay at the hospital for Billy, and we both think you should be somewhere else,” he says straightforwardly. “And I don’t want that son of a bitch finding any of you before we can get to him.”

“Are you gonna arrest him?”

“I’ve put a call out on him yeah.”

“What then? Will you lock him up?”

Hopper rubs his beard and sighs. “I can get a restraining order against him for now. Stop him from coming near any of you. The rest depends on how chatty Billy is feeling.”

“Why?” Max questions, frowning warily. “We’ve already told you what happened. Isn’t that enough?”

It seemed more than enough in Max’s opinion.

Hopper pauses and regards her thoughtfully. There’s something in his posture that tells her he wouldn’t normally talk about these sorts of things with her—with a kid. But they both know she’s seen worse—they experienced it together, along with the rest of their mismatched group. Save the world with somebody once and it creates an unspoken understanding. Max has mad respect for Hopper, after everything she’d heard he’s done for Will and Mrs. Byers. And El. She knows that even if he gets it wrong, he means well.

She feels like he respects her too—not something she typically receives a lot of from adults.

“The justice system isn’t always fair,” he says, a slight grimace on his face. “Shitty parents are a dime a dozen and too many of them get away with barely a slap on the wrist. I need Billy to talk.” Hopper looks past her, and she follows his gaze to her mom speaking with a nurse further down the hall. “I doubt this is an isolated incident.”

Max notes her heart beats slightly quicker. She nods numbly and looks away, considering the weight of his words.

 

 

Her mom bids her a weepy farewell, sniffling and failing to blink back tears. She says _I’m so sorry_ and _I shouldn’t_ _have let ANY of this happen_ again and Max clenches her jaw, feels a stab of annoyance, and stiffly hugs her back.

They stop by her house so she can pick up a change of clothes. The driveway is vacant but Hopper still leads the way inside, flicking on the lights and checking to make sure they were alone.

Max hurries to her room, pulls out a backpack and stuffs what she needs inside. Her mom said she’d come for her tomorrow, after she’d seen Billy.

Hopper is at the door of Billy’s room when she comes back out a couple of minutes later; taking in the mess Neil had left. Max had barely noted it at the time, but she remembers tapes scattered across the floor, the sheets from the bed torn away. Her mom told Hopper how Neil had accused Billy of stealing money from him—searched his room and found nearly $50 shoved under his mattress.

Max doesn’t know if he really stole it. Normally she wouldn’t have put it past him, but that was before tonight happened, and now she’s not so sure Billy would have risked the consequences.

With everything so tense and quiet she can almost hear the biting tone of Neil’s voice echoing throughout the house. From the hushed late night arguments she’d overheard to the way Neil would simply growl “ _Billy_ ” over the dinner table.

Billy never won when Neil was around. He always backed down sooner or later.

Sometimes Max had felt bad for him. Sometimes she’d found it funny.

That makes her stomach twist unpleasantly now. Makes her wonder what else her hatred of Billy might have blinded her from. She saw Neil slap him once, shortly after Christmas, and she’d known it was wrong but. Her hurt and anger were still raw; too wary of Billy to lower her guard enough to extend any sympathy. It was easier to just hate him.

She wonders if that makes her cruel.

When they’re back in Hopper’s jeep, she wraps her arms around her backpack, hugging it to her chest. The roads out here are quiet, two sets of headlights illuminate them briefly as they pass but otherwise, they sit in the dark with only the hum of the engine. Hopper didn’t ask any questions after inspecting Billy’s room and that should have been a blessing, but returning to the house had left her feeling uneasy; agitated.

 She keeps glancing at Hopper, as if he can explain it for her, but he remains silent, eyes focused on the road. She wishes he had switched the radio on, the quiet intimidating and begging to be filled, but switching it on now would make it weird and she _doesn’t_ want to make it weird.

“I didn’t know he was like that,” she announces suddenly. “Neil I mean.”

“I know.”

“I saw him slap Billy months ago,” she admits in a weird voice. “I just—I thought he _deserved_ it. After everything—” she swallows around the lump forming in her throat, her mouth dry “—I _know_ that sounds awful. But I was _so mad_ at him—“

“It’s okay Max. You had every right to feel that way—“

“—I _still_ feel that way. Not as badly as I used to, but I still don’t like him.” She squeezes her bag, feels awkward and unsure of what she’s even saying. It’s an unsettling and perplexing, switching so quickly from wishing someone gone to defending them. The insinuation that Neil might have been knocking Billy around the whole time leaves her cold and clammy; guilt clenching her innards for every time she smirked to herself when Billy got reprimanded.

“Listen, kid. Max. When you get older you start to realise that life isn’t black and white. People aren’t always just good or bad. Most of us are. _Complicated_.” He takes a hand off the wheel and rubs at the back of his neck. “I’m not great with these speeches. But point is. Nobody gets to decide how you feel about all this. It’s okay if you’re conflicted and it’s okay if you’re still angry with Billy. He did you wrong.”

Even with permission Max still feels herself deflate, her anger impossible to accumulate when all she could picture was Billy cupping a pool of blood on his bedroom floor, blink, and he was drugged up in a hospital bed. Her eyes drop and she mutters miserably, “I feel like an idiot.”

“You’re not an idiot.”

“You just said nobody can decide how I feel.”

“Yeah. You can feel angry, or sad, or whatever. But you’re not an idiot.” She doesn’t respond. He sounds sincere but it’s difficult to take to heart. They slow down, headlights illuminating the turn for Will’s place. “Hey, listen to me alright. What you did tonight was brave. You shouldn’t have had to deal with any of that, but you stepped up. You did good you hear me?” She lifts her chin and looks to Hopper through her hair, his expression soft. She nods unsurely.

“Okay.”

“Good.” His focus shifts back to the road and takes them onto the bumpy stretch of drive. Ahead she can make out the familiar shadow that is Will’s house. It’s well past midnight now but there’s a light on in the living room—Mrs Byers waiting up for them like Hopper had said.

It’s surreal to think she’d been here only a few hours ago watching _The Empire Strikes Back_ with her friends. Dustin said it was Star Wars day— _“May the fourth be with you? May the FORCE be with you? Get it?—_ in that overly patronizing tone he slipped into sometimes. The boys like Han Solo the best, save Will who’s favourite is Luke, but Max has always been drawn to Leia—admired her unrelenting determination and composure even when the odds were stacked against her.

Lucas had agreed, said “ _she’s clever too—like you”_ and Max had to give him a shove so he wouldn’t see her blushing. She’d liked it though. Lucas says nice things about her all the time, which isn’t strange among friends, but it’s different with him—makers her stomach swoop, both nervous and exciting.

She wishes she could rewind time, go back and appreciate the warmth and security Lucas and the others provided her with.

The porch light flickers on and Mrs Byers steps out with her grey nightgown pulled tightly around her, padding down to meet them in matching slippers. Max slides out once they’re parked, preparing herself for another bout of questioning.

“Max.” She’s pulled into a firm hug, her face brushing against the bobbled material, worn but still soft. A hand strokes the back of her head, smoothing down her hair, and Max’s eyes prickle but she blinks back the tears—wants to be strong and brave, like Leia.

She squeezes back, tries not to let her voice wobble when she says, “I’m sorry it’s late—“

“Never mind that, silly,” Mrs Byers laughs softly, drawing back and running her hands down Max’s shoulders and arms. She looks tired and anxious, which isn’t unusual—Max knows she struggles, inevitable after everything that had happened to her family—but her eyes were still the same soothing brown; deep pools of compassion and empathy. From the moment they officially met—after _that_ night—she’d embraced Max as one the party, embracing her into a warm hug and saying, _“It’s great to see you, I’m so glad the boys have got a new friend_.”

She strokes her hands, thumbs soothing over her knuckles and waits patiently until Max feels she can meet her eyes. “Don’t apologise, you know you’re _always_ welcome here.”

She makes it _so hard_ not to cry.

“Thank you, Mrs Byers,” she whispers, voice hitching.

“Call me Joyce. Come on, let’s go inside.”

Will and Jonathon are awake, waiting in the living room in their pajamas. They both jump to their feet when she enters, shuffling awkwardly closer to her

“Hey,” Will greets in a quiet voice. “Are you—okay?” He winces, looking almost apologetic just for asking.

“Yeah, I’m good.” It’s unconvincing and they all know it, but Will doesn’t comment on it. He gives Max an understanding nod and she exhales, grateful, letting her shoulders sag, and follows Will into the living room, depositing her backpack on the couch. Everything looks the same as a few hours ago. A small stack of VHS covers sat next to the old TV and a few comics scattered across the floor; spare cushions and pillows piled on the armchair.  She spots the one she’d had folded up under her chin while sprawled out on the floor watching Star Wars.

Jonathon lingers near the hallway where Hopper and Mrs Byers are having a whispered discussion and Max turns away, unconsciously picking at her cuticles with her jagged nails; grimacing when she tears her skin—the sting unexpectedly painful—and she forces herself to stop, crossing her arms her arms over her chest. Will is watching her carefully, his large eyes observing her twitchy and uncharacteristic behaviour, and she _knows_ she’s acting like a weirdo and feels stupid for it all over again. Will’s been through so much worse.

“I’m going to take off; I need to check in at the station. Hey, Max.” She looks over her shoulder at Hopper. “Try and get some sleep, okay?” She nods. “You’re in good hands.” He raps his knuckles on the doorframe, returns her nod, and wishes Mrs Byers goodnight; Max notices their hands touch momentarily before she drags her eyes away.

The door shuts quietly behind him when he leaves, and Mrs Byers patters back in, her tired smile fixed perfectly in place.

“Are you sleepy at all? Or would you like to stay up for a little while? I can make hot coco?” Max just shrugs feebly, even the smallest decisions proving too much of a challenge, but Mrs Byers seems to understand just fine, recognising insecurity when she sees it. “Make yourself at home—Jonathon? Can you help me in the kitchen?”

She’s grateful that they don’t bombard her with questions, but it’s a little overwhelming having them cater to her like she just passed by for a scheduled midnight visit; she's taken back by how efficiently they're handling the situation. She can hear Mrs Byers and Jonathan from the kitchen, glasses clinking and cupboards creaking; she's not even sure if she wants hot coco—her appetite dead with no sign of returning. She doesn't say anything though, doesn't want to be awkward or ungrateful. Will tilts his head at her, still reading her posture thoughtfully.

 “…If you’re tired you can sleep in my room. I don’t mind.”

“What. No.  No, I don’t wanna take your bed—“ she stammers, eyeing up his pale blue pajamas and dishevelled hair and she shifts guiltily. “I’m sorry for waking you all up; you can go back to sleep if you want to …” Will’s already shaking his head.

“No it’s fine.  Sometimes I—can’t always sleep too well. I find it helps to have someone around…” He trails off unsurely but Max gets it—suddenly understanding why Mrs Byers appears so much more competent than her mom.  This— _situation_ —probably isn’t all too unfamiliar for them… they might put on their best faces in company, but Max figures they’ve all endured countless sleepless nights; consoling each other through nightmares and insomnia.

“You wanna watch TV?” Will asks suddenly, gesturing at the set. “Mike left his copy of _Empire_ here, I was gonna watch it again tomorrow but we could watch it now?”

He plucks the tape from the top of pile and holds it up and Max just gapes at him for a second.

Sure, if it’s between sitting in strained silence and Star Wars, then it’s a no-brainer. But it’s like a _two hour_ long movie. There’s a clock on the wall and the small hand is resting close to one; they both should have been in bed over 2 hours ago—Will _had_ been in bed, and she knows Jonathon has work at 8am—he _told_ her so himself just before he dropped her off back home and now he’s making her coco and she feels like such a _bother_.

“Here we go,” Mrs Byer croons, placing two steaming mugs—topped with marshmallows—down on the coffee table. “Oh, what’re we watching?” She squints at the case. “Gosh, you kids love Star Wars don’t you. It’s a good thing we left all these cushions out—I’ll get some blankets too—“

“I’ll get them,” Jon says, bringing in two more mugs from the kitchen just as Max objects, “you don’t have to—!” But Will is already kneeling in front of the TV, pushing the tape into the player before steering her to the sofa like they’d done this a thousand times before and Max flops down helplessly; barrelled over by their kindness.

They don’t talk much. They keep the volume low and lights dim, huddled under a stripped blanket on the battered yet surprisingly comfortable sofa. Mrs Byers finishes sharing out pillows and settles into an armchair just after the opening credits finish rolling and the Empire is sending scouts to Hoth.

Despite Dustin thinking she was some Star War newbie, Max has watched the franchise enough times to know most of the planet and species names and to expect the wampa’s sudden roaring appearance. It doesn’t startle her anymore.

She watched both _The Empire Strikes Back_ and _Return of The Jedi_ for the first time with Billy of all people.

Max had only just seen _A New Hope_ after the home video release and she’d begged her parents to take her to _The Empire Strikes Back_ when it came back to the movie theatres—coincidentally it was not long after her mom started dating Neil. They all went together for Billy’s 16th birthday. She remembers how Billy gauged her puzzled reaction when Han Solo cut open the dead Tauntaun’s belly, and leaned down to whisper, _“he’s gonna stuff Luke in there—gotta keep ‘im warm,”_ —sniggering when she grimaced in disgust.

Her eyes flicker from the screen to her untouched hot coco, marshmallows lumpy and melted.

Neil was—unsurprisingly—the one who bullied Billy into taking her to see _Return of The Jedi_. Billy hadn’t been happy about it, said he was going on a date but relented when Neil gave him cash for drinks and snacks. He’d been a dick at first—bitched the entire way to the theater—thankfully his date seemed to think it was _sweet_ of him to bring his little sister along, and Billy kind of chilled out knowing he hadn’t been cock-blocked. He let her get a soda and a huge bucket of salted popcorn which he picked from after finishing his own, and afterwards they’d had an intense discussion about the series over a burger at the dinner across the road. Han Solo is Billy’s favourite character, but he acknowledged that Leia was pretty cool too and Max had beamed, feeling validated.

The memory makes her scowl—face scrunching up with shame and bitterness, because underneath all the sulking and poutiness; she really had wanted Billy to like her—craving for his respect and approval. The first time he blasted Venom out of his stereo she’d wanted to slap her hands over her ears to block it out, but she’d grudgingly forced herself to endure—wincing her way through demos from Slayer and Death Angel—until eventually the shrieking guitars and obscene lyrics didn’t faze her anymore.

It had been naive to think she could tap her foot along to Metallica and that would’ve been enough to win him over.

She kind of despises herself for wanting it in the first place.

Jonathon goes to bed half an hour in; offers a barely audible _goodnight_ and takes away their mugs—says nothing when he picks up Max’s untouched one. Will starts dozing not long after. He clearly tries to fight it, snapping his eyes open and glancing at Max as if he felt it would be wrong to fall asleep before her. It’s sweet really. She catches his eyes drooping again and this time when he slumps against the arm of the sofa he doesn’t reawaken. It’s fine though, she appreciates his presence. It’s peaceful almost, after the fidgety and smothering company from her mom; she manages to relax a little, curling up and sinking her head into her pillow. She barely follows the movie, her itchy eyes fixed on the glowing screen but not really absorbing any of it. She rubs at them wearily.

“Are you tired honey?” Mrs Byers whispers from her right, and Max tilts her head to squint at her through the dark.

“I dunno. Maybe a little.”  Her body feels fatigued but her mind is annoyingly alert. She doubts she’ll fall asleep soon but she feels guilty keeping Mrs Byers awake.

She doesn’t understand why her mom had to stay at the hospital. It’s not like she could do anything more for Billy.

“You’re still free to take Will’s bed. He did offer.”

“No I’m—it’s okay. I—I’m comfy here.” She tucks her chin under the blanket.

“Do you want to talk at all?”

Her first response is to say _no_ , but it catches in her throat. It’s not that she really wants to talk, but sitting here with her thoughts running rampant isn’t exactly desirable either. If she had a choice she would click her fingers and fall into a dreamless sleep, give her head a rest, and maybe she’d wake up and everything would be simpler in the morning.

“I don’t really know what so say,” she mumbles eventually, picking at her cuticles under the blankets, and Mrs Byers just smiles at her.

“It doesn’t have to make sense. Sometimes just rambling a little helps.”

It sounds simple enough, there are plenty of vague and nonsensical thoughts pestering her conscious but she doesn’t know which one to start with. They blend and fold together; impossible to decipher what emotions she’s feeling and for who.

Her eyebrows pinch together. “I’m just so… _annoyed_ with everything.” The fuzz on the blanket scratches her chin when she speaks. “It’s never been great. At home I mean—but I didn’t think it was like _this_ …” Mrs Byers doesn’t answer, but she tilts her head forward just barely, signing for her to continue.

 “Hopper… he said he doesn’t think this is the first time something like this has happened. And I think he’s right, and I, I think my mom knew about it.” She swallows bitterly. “She kept acting like it was her fault.”

“Mom’s always feel that way,” Mrs Byers hums knowingly.

“I know, I just—I don’t get why she married him. Like. If she _knew_ ,”—she struggles to keep her voice low—“that’s a bad sign right? I—I never said _anything_ when Billy—I wanted her to be happy so I didn’t say anything because I knew she’d freak out and tell Neil, and then he’d just scream at Billy and—“ Will mumbles something in his sleep and Max cuts herself off with an sharp inhale, holds it, and exhales. On the TV, Lando has just betrayed Han by selling him out to Vader— _I had no choice… I’m sorry—_ and she thinks about how Leia mistrusted him all along. “I wouldn’t stay with someone if I knew they were like that,” she finishes, drained and incapable of putting all she felt into words. Mrs Byers stays silent for a while, waits until Max has had the chance to catch her breath.

“You might’ve heard about Will’s father, Lonnie.” Max nods hesitantly. He’d been mentioned a few times in passing, never in a positive way, and Max hadn’t pried; she didn’t need the full story to recognise that they were better off without him. “He liked to drink. He would push Jonathon around and say all kinds of awful things to Will. There’s not a day that goes by where I don’t wish I’d put a stop to it sooner.”

Max chews her lip awkwardly. She doesn’t know what to say to that. Can’t picture a scenario where Mrs Byers wasn’t doing everything in her power to ensure Jon and Will’s safety.

“I wasn’t even angry when I found out he’d been seeing another woman, by that point I just wanted him out of our lives and that—it made it easier to cut the ties.” She smiles sadly and Max— _god_ , she’s being such a baby—feels her eyes prickling again. “He left scars though. Deeper than I thought and I”—she presses her lips together and shakes her head—“I _regret_ not kicking him out the first moment I saw him slap Jonathon.”

Remorse rings wistfully in her voice, so small and soft—the corners of her mouth twitching into the saddest of smiles and Max can’t stop the tears teaming and spilling down her cheeks. She whips her hand out from under the blanket the wipe them away, sniffling embarrassingly.

“Hey, sweetie, I’m sorry.” Mrs Byers reaches over and takes her hand, running her fingers over her knuckles as before. “I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

“S’not you,” Max hiccups pathetically, her voice all wobbly and wet, and she cries harder because Mrs Byers was just trying to make her feel better and she had to start _sobbing._ “I just… _hate_ that it has to be like this… everything was starting to get so _good_ , and now…"

"Sshhh, I know, I know," she soothes, "you don't deserve any of this. But it'll get better."

She feels whiny, sobbing— _"how?"—_ like a lost, overburdened child, wishing she were older and wiser and not a helpless spectator.

“Time. I know that’s not what you want to hear, doesn’t make it feel any less scary now…” She squeezes her hand tighter. “But, y’know, you moved to a brand new town and immediately got dragged into its messy secrets; I’m sure that was scary too… but it’s gotten easier hasn’t it? We’ve got each other.” She leans over the armrest, brushes Max’s hair from her face and kisses her forehead, mumbling into her skin, "you did good tonight, sweetie, you hear me…" and Max’s face crumples—hearing an echo of the same words spoken by Hopper—latching onto Mrs Byer’s dressing gown, face crumbling and doing her best to stifle the sobs wracking her frame.  "You were so brave."

They sit there for minutes, Mrs Byers gently rocking them to-and-fro, balanced awkwardly over the small gap between their seats, gliding her fingers through her hair and rubbing her back until the tears cease and sobs dissolve; fatigue oozing into her bones followed by a cool clinical calmness. She feels tired now. The fingers brushing through her hair rhythmically are comforting; her eyelids slipping shut, wishing she could hide her blotchy face in Mrs Byers’s soft dressing gown until the world has righted itself again, but she pulls back eventually, hiccuping and sounding gross as she sniffles.

Mrs Byers still has a smile for her, brushing her thumb along her jaw. She can just about hear Will’s shallow breathing, the hum of the television—dramatic music and Chewie’s distressed cries as Han is put into hibernation—it all feels so distant; like she’s listening from another room.

She uses the blanket to dab at the moisture on her cheeks. “I—thank you, Mrs Byers.” 

“—Joyce, sweetie.”

_Joyce_. It’s strange to be so familiar with a friend’s parent—the only adult Max calls by their first name is _Neil—_ although she supposes Mrs. Byers has become a friend too; albeit a different sort, but reliable and trustworthy all the same.

A smile tweaks at her lips, exhausted but genuine; feels a bit braver, a little lighter in the heart.

“Joyce.”

 

 

It’s a little past 6pm when her mom comes to collect her and feels, not eager, but ready to leave.

She’d slept late—waking with cramped muscles and a crick in her neck when Jonathon returned from work; the midday sun blinding her through the gap in the curtains. There’d been confusion—blissfully for a second—before the memories shuttered into place and Max had felt very cold again, terrified the new day would bring a fresh wave of trauma.

It hadn’t, strangely.

Joyce was an unstoppable force, serving up lunch and cleaning the kitchen—only pausing her routine to lay gentle touches to Max’s arm and back; silent comforting gestures that she appreciated more than she could put into words.

After they’d eaten, Will pulled her off to Jonathon’s room—showing her his impressive tape collection that could rival Billy’s—and they’d sat on the floor, colouring pencils and stacks of paper littered around them while Jonathon filled the quiet with some mellow rock band. She’s never considered herself to be much of an artist—felt especially terrible compared to Will and his creative illustrations—and yet it was pleasantly relaxing.

Not _normal_ , but—it offered a shred of familiarity for her to latch onto.

Something to keep her anchored.

Jonathon goes to window when they hear the rumble of the Camaro.

“She’s driving Billy’s car?”

“Yeah, she doesn’t have her own,” Max explains scooping up her bag and slinging it onto her shoulder.

 Joyce goes to the door to let her mom in, and Max pauses before joining them, biting her lip and hanging back as they begin speaking in hushed voice, hurriedly exchanging assurances and gratitude.

“I—thank you. For everything. You, you’ve all made this a lot easier…” she says, awkward but honest

“It fine, honestly, it’s what friends do.” Like it’s the simplest thing in the world. She runs a hand over the strap of her bag, glancing quickly over her shoulder to where her mom and Joyce were still conferring.

“Can you not like, say anything to the guys? Not yet, at least, I don’t—I wanna talk to my mum and find out what the hell happens next before …” she trails off, swallowing and giving him an apologetic look for putting him in a compromising position, “I just don’t want to make them freak out…” she finishes tiredly.

 “I won’t tell,” he assures her, all wide eyed and his face an open book, “I promise, not until you want to,” and she believes him without doubt; flinging her arms around his bony frame and burying her nose in his soft hair soft—cheap shampoo tickling her scent. She feels his arms encircle her, patting her back, before she shifts away, hitching her bag up.

“See you tomorrow.”

Jonathon nods at her as she passes him, hands tucked under in armpits. “Good luck,” and she nods back appreciatively, taking a deep breath.

Her mom looks haggard, hair unwashed and scraped back into a messy ponytail, dark circles lining her puffy eyes.

“Maxine…” she breathes weepily, stooping over and pulling her into a hug; sniffling by her ear, _“are you okay … I’m so sorry … for all of this…”_ and Max fidgets in her arms, squeezing back for only a second, before she’s wriggling free.

“Mom, _mom_ —I’m fine—“

“—so sorry, I never thought—“

“ _Mom!”_

She doesn’t yell, but there’s a harsh bite to her voice and her mom stills—face falling with something like sorrow—and Max is hyperaware of Joyce’s presence next to them.

“I’m sor—I—“ she breaks off with a dithering smile, inching back and wringing her hands nervously. “Thank you again, Joyce, you have no idea how—“

Joyce lays her hand on her shoulder, “Susan, please, it’s nothing—anything I can do to help.”

Max thinks her mom’s gonna burst into tears if they stay any longer and she doesn’t want Joyce, Jon or Will to have to deal with that so she begins steering her to door, pausing only to thank Joyce herself, and Joyce leans in quick for one more hug, whispering, “ _remember, you’re always welcome here,”_ and Max squeezes her tight, nodding into her chest, before they separate. She sets her jaw—clinging onto all the courage she’s managed to scrape together—keeps her head aloft as she waves goodbye.

She watches them through the wing-mirror— their figures shrinking—and lets out a slow shuddering breath when they disappear around the bend, refocusing on the trees flashing past the window and waits for her mom to speak.

And waits.

And waits.

They’ve passed Mirkwood and are approaching Old Cherry Lane when her disbelief gets the better of her, and she coolly asks, “so, how Billy?—he alive?”

Her mom fidgets. “Oh, uhm, yes? He—I sat with him for a while, he can’t talk all too well at the moment…”

Max stares incredulously.

_That’s it?_

Like, her step-brother is in hospital and her mom can’t be any more enlightening?

 “So, is he gonna be okay then?” She can’t understand why her mom is being so unforthcoming, all meek and secretive like Max didn’t witness Neil breaking Billy’s jaw.

It’s aggravating, the way she winces when she says, “he’s in pain, a little nauseous but … he’ll get better...” and Max’s impatience wears thin.

“And Neil?” She presses, diving straight into the next hurdle.

Her mom had called from the hospital in the morning and relayed what little news she had about Billy’s condition (groggy but recovering) to Joyce, who passed it onto Max, and that was all she’d had to go on; her questions slowly mounting as the day went on. Her mom hadn’t even asked to speak to her, and Max tries not to be annoyed about that—tries to justify it by telling herself she was busy dealing with Billy—but it’s impossible to clear her voice of irritation when she’s so obviously dodging the topic. The great big elephant in the room.

“I don’t know,” she says uncertainly after a while. “He hasn’t been home as far as I can tell…” Max waits for further information, leaning over the console expectantly, prompting with her hand for her to continue.

“… _And?_ … Are you going to tell me anything else?” Her mom keeps her eyes forward, blinking methodically, lips pressed in a rigid line. “Why aren’t you saying anything?”

“It’s not—there’s a lot going on Max, and I don’t want you to worry about it.” Her voice is quiet, grief-stricken, and Max _hates_ it. It’s not _right_.

“It’s a little late for that!” She yells, louder and shriller than she intended, and her mom actually _cowers_ , her head dipping shamefully, and Max bristles.

She waited all day, replayed Joyce’s words over in her head— _“time … it’s gotten easier … you did good”—_ hardened her nerve and resolved to tackle one issue at a time, starting with figuring out what exactly is in store for their “family” next, and in the end all she gets is _this_.

Vague statements and useless apologies, like any of it is going to help them.

She doesn’t want her mother’s guilt or concern or to be shielded from ugly truths—she’s _seen_ the truth with her own two eyes, felt its wrath on her cheek—to be treated like such a child after everything she’s uncovered is just _insulting_.

Silence meets her and she pays it back with vigour—stubbornly crossing her arms and legs and staring determinedly out of the window—letting the flair of her nostrils do all the talking.

She wanted to leave Will’s place because it made it too obvious that something was wrong; felt too much like hiding, and Max—this is her _life_ ; shouldn’t she get some say in what happens?

Shouldn’t she at least be kept in the loop?

Like, does her mom expect her to just come home and sit pretty while the _adults_ handle everything?

‘Cause they’ve been doing such a _great_ job of that so far.

The Camaro crawls onto the drive—bathed in shadow from the dimming sun—and Max glares resentfully at the dark windows—silent and undisturbed—hating the house and all its lies.

Her mom shuts off the engine.

“Listen Max, please—“ but she’s already ripping off her seatbelt, shoving the door open “—I know you’re upset and, and if you don’t want to go to school tomorrow—“

Max spins on her heel, ducks her head—fixing one of her best glares—“I’m _going!”_ and she slams the car door dramatically.

 

So she goes to school, grouchy and tired after fitful night’s sleep, thankful to escape her mom’s pitiful attempts at conversation but apprehensive at the thought of facing her friends.

It’s a frustrating cycle of wanting to be somewhere else only to get there and realise she doesn’t want to be there either.

Lucas, Dustin and Mike are at the bike rack and they all turn when they hear the growl of the Camaro pulling up at the drop-off point outside the middle school. That’s the first clue that something is different and she knows they’ll pick up on it. She grips the strap on her backpack and climbs out the car casually, muttering _bye_ to her mom. She knows they’re all watching her so she makes sure not to slam the car door this time or put too much stomp into her walk. _Be cool_.

She waves when she gets closer. Dustin frowns under his cap. “Where’s your douchebag stepbrother?”

Her shrug feels too stiff. “Sick or something.” She avoids their eyes, continues past them towards the school, putting too much thought into picking the right pace and scowling when it all just feels _wrong_.

It feels more dramatic than it should be; her heart beating unnaturally fast.

“Hey.”

Lucas is at her side, matching her step and trying to peer at her face. She forces a neutral expression.

“Are you alright?” He asks hesitantly, and she mentally curses. She used to be better at playing it cool. Or maybe Lucas has just gotten better at reading her.

“I’m fine,” she answers shortly, grimacing at how dismissive she sounds. She doesn’t want to push him away, but she’s not ready to risk balling her eyes out or losing her temper, and she can’t figure out which one seems more likely. She hasn’t had to explain the whole story to anyone yet. Her mom told Hopper who told Joyce and Joyce told Will and Jonathon.

She doesn’t want to imagine what her voice will do if she tells Lucas.

_When_. She reminds herself.

When she tells him.

Because they swore to do that. It’s a rule they followed in the party and she’d _earned_ her position—she isn’t about to throw that away.

She comes to a halt just outside the main doors and turns to Lucas. He looks at her with genuine concern written in his eyes, and she feels herself soften; her edges dulling as she reminds herself that Lucas has always been on her side. He’s understanding.

“I just, don’t really know how to talk about it right now,” she says honestly, a little proud when her voice doesn’t crack.

“So, there _is_ something wrong?”

She shuffles her feet and gives a quick nod.

“Wrong as in…“ he lowers his voice, eyes skirting over the people milling about around them, “like—end of the world?” And Max finds herself chuckling, giving him a little dig in the arm.

“No. You dork. Nothing like that.”  

“Okay,” he says offhandedly, still studying her carefully. “It is the “ _Billy”_ kind of bad?”

The smile drops off her face.

“What— _no_.” She responds too quickly. Lucas raises his eyebrows, unconvinced. She shifts her weight, rubs a hands down her face exasperatedly. “Sort of, but not really?” She sounds lame, and her face twists apologetically.

“Okay,” Lucas says again, his throat bobbing as he swallows, eyebrows pinched together “Y’know… your cheek is swollen… you know that right?”

Her hand unconsciously jumps to her face, fingertips brushing over the spot where Neil slapped her.

It doesn’t hurt anymore and she thought it looked normal when she’d left the house.

Under different circumstances she might’ve found Lucas’s attentiveness rather endearing, but now it’s just putting her in a difficult place. Of _course_ the first thing he’d assume is that Billy finally cracked her, it’s a logical verdict to come to, and it would probably be easier to explain if that were the case but … it’s _not_ the case and for once Max doesn’t want Lucas to think bad of Billy because— _shit_ —she feels _sorry_ for him, and that’s something she’s still struggling to come to terms with.

 “Listen, I wanna tell you and I’m _going_ to tell you but—“ she closes her eyes, shakes her head, says, “—I feel like I don’t know what the hell’s going on either and… I just wanna _not_ think about it right now…” which is a joke because she’s barely been able to think of anything else. The same spiel projecting uselessly across her mind; making her second guess everything she once thought was right and souring her mood.

The bell rings and the crowds around them hustle. The two of them remain still until the final straggles push through the doors.

 “You promise you’ll tell me? Once you figure it out?” Lucas asks.

“I swear it,” she says, _means_ it, and he nods his head compliantly.

“Then I trust you, Mad Max.” And she exhales, a huge weight falling off her chest.

“Thank you,” she breathes earnestly.

 

 

The day manages to pass without too many bumps. She’s caught staring aimlessly at walls and out of windows—snapped back to reality by clicking fingers and Dustin proclaiming _“man you are really out of it today”_ more than once—but it gets a little easier, as the day wears on, to hang onto the threads of their conversations; moments of rest where she blissfully forgets her family is in ruins.

The thought of going home becomes almost daunting, but her mom doesn’t give her time to dawdle outside the school; waving her arm and beckoning her over impatiently.

“Billy’s home and Neil has been arrested,” she says rapidly the moment Max slumps into the car and she has to do a double take.

“Wait—what?” She cries. “Neil’s been _arrested?_ They found him? Did he come home…?“

“No, um, Chief Hopper told me he picked him last night. At a bar.”

“A _bar?_ ” She gapes. “He was just getting _drunk?_ ”

“I don’t know, Maxine, I didn’t… ask for the details—“

“—why _not?_ ”

Someone behind them blasts on their horn and Max pivots in her seat, sticking her middle finger up through the rear window; oblivious to her mom’s aghast cries as she swipes at her hands, waving apologetically to the stunned driver and scrambling to knock the car into motion.

“Max, listen,” she exhales wearily once she’s finished tutting, peeling away from the sidewalk. “I—I thought about what you said, and I—you were right, I’m sorry. It wasn’t fair of me to exclude you…”

Max stills at those words, shooting wary side-glances, waiting for the _but_ in there.

To her surprise it doesn’t come.

“All I know is, Hopper is going to hold him for three days, and during that time he’s going to get a restraining order. He still needs to speak properly with Billy yet and… that might not happen for a few days…”

Max slowly takes in her words. “So, he won’t be coming home?” She’s scared to believe that might be true.

By the looks of it her mom is too. She’s hesitating, chewing at her lips.

“I hope so…”

It’s not exactly the inspiring answer Max was hoping for, but it’s worth the knowledge that her mom is being honest with her.

“And Billy?”

“I picked him up from the hospital a couple of hours ago, s’why I’m in such a hurry to get back.” And Max notes she’s driving a little above the speed limit—nothing on the speeds she’d seen Billy drive at, but still, remarkably fast considering her mom is fairly nervous behind the wheel. “He’s… going to be out of school for a couple of weeks at least, and I’ve had to arrange to take some time off from work to look after him.”

“It’s that bad?” Max asks quietly.

“He’s managing but, his painkillers are quite strong, he gets a little _—disorientated_. And he’s got this… whole _diet_ he need to stick to,” she sighs, exasperated, running her hand through her hair she apparently found time to wash. It falls limply back around her face; devoid of its usual bounce.

“Maxie. I—it’s going to be a little strange around the house for a while—“ and Max thinks _yeah, no shit_ but bites her tongue “—and I’m not one hundred percent sure how… _everything_ is going to turn out. In the long run. And I—if I seem…” She tilts her head, searching for the right word “… _distracted_ , then I—please forgive me. I just… I need to make things easier for Billy right now.”

Max is kind of taken aback by this huge one-eighty. It’s not unwelcome by any means—in fact it’s pretty close to what she wanted—only she’d been preparing for more haughty silences punctured with a few brisk arguments. She hadn’t anticipated such heartfelt sincerity.

She’s undeniably pleased—it’s not like she _enjoyed_ being on non-speaking-terms with her mom; it was exhausting on top of everything else—and she already feels less taut; arms unfolding and spine relaxing.

But remorse carries heavy in her mom’s voice and Max needs to clarify one more thing before they can move forward.

“This has happened before, hasn’t it.”

Her mom looks uncomfortable as hell, but she answers all the same. “Yes.”

Max nods, her suspicions confirmed.

“A lot?”

“I—I don’t really know,” she says weakly, “I think Neil—he would try to wait until neither of us were around. But. I was there. A few times.” Her voice wobbles, and she sniffs. “I never imagined it would go this far though.”

And Max kind of gets that.

She can clearly remember that January morning in the kitchen. The sight of Neil’s hand rising before slicing through the air, the hard meat of his palm colliding with Billy’s cheek with a resounding _smack_. The way she’d froze mid-step, struck with panic as Neil gripped Billy chin pulling him so they were almost nose-to-nose.

“I saw it once too,” Max says just as they pull onto the drive. She clears her throat. “In the kitchen. Neil, uh, he slapped Billy.”

She hears the sharp inhale, a pause, then

“You saw?” Her mom asks sorrowfully and Max stares at her feet, toeing at her bag between them.

“Yeah. Neil, he—he made it sound like Billy deserved it.”

They’d caught her staring. Billy’s eyes had wandered, latching onto her over his dad’s shoulder, and Neil had followed his gaze.

_“I’m sorry you had to see that, Maxine.”_

He’d sounded remorseful, solemn; subdued compared to the dangerous tone he’d used to tell Billy to go to his room.

_“Your brother is… difficult. I have to be firm with him,”_ he’d said, and Max remembers how the light had glinted off his gold ring as he slipped it back onto his middle finger.

_“Do you understand?”_

“He did that a lot,” her mom sighs quietly as she cuts the engine and pulls the key out. She shakes her head, mutters unhappily “I should have done something sooner.”

It’s a resounding statement that takes Max back to what Joyce had said to her. _“I regret not kicking him out the first moment I saw him slap Jonathon.”_ And she supposes she understands a little better now.

Neil had asked “ _do you understand?”_ and Max had nodded, however unsurely, and she’d stepped aside and pushed it to the back of her mind.

She knows, realistically, that there would have been little she could have done had she acted upon her discomfort back then. She might’ve only aggravated the situation; summoned the chaos from Saturday night to an earlier date.

But she can’t help feeling shitty for dismissing it so hastily. For not putting the dots together when she were so glaringly obvious.

 

They enter the house together; the hostility from earlier shattered after they shared a long and back-breaking hug in the car.

“Billy?” her mom calls, placing the car keys on the table, and going into the living room.

Max decides to go to her room first, dropping her bag and kicking off her shoes. She lingers a little, pacing and swinging her arms back and forth, prepping herself to go back out.

She’d promised herself she would figure everything out. Step by step. Neil is (hopefully) out of the picture, for now, her mom is speaking honestly and civilly with her, _for now_ , and next—

Next is Billy.

She’s really not expecting much. Knows he’s gonna be high as a kite and even if he weren’t, heart-to-hearts were never really their forte; the closest they ever got was screaming about how much they hated each other.

But she wants to know where they stand, what’s changed between them— _if_ anything has changed. She feels like it has. She knows she’s not going to be able to look at his beaten face and feel the same as before. But she also knows she risks a lot to let her guard down—she’s seen the worst of Billy—and the possibility that Billy might use Neil’s absence as permission to fall back into his old ways doesn’t escape her mind.

She creeps round the door, hears her mom hustling around back in the kitchen, and slips past her into the living room. It’s dim, all the curtains drawn shut, and there’s some cheesy old cowboy movie playing on the TV.

Opposite she sees Billy lying on the sofa like a sad sack of shit.

Max shuffles awkwardly round the room, feeling out the furniture with her hands when she finds herself unable to look away from him.

He doesn’t even to seem to notice she’s there.

There’s an unnatural glossy shine to his eyes which Max figures is result of his pain meds, and they don’t so much as flicker when she seats herself on the smaller couch nearer to the TV. He blinks agonizingly slowly, as if it takes all the effort in the world, and with his swollen mouth he almost looks like he’s pouting.

She wants to say something; to announce herself—make him acknowledge her—but nothing that comes to mind seems appropriate. Normally she might say _“you look like shit”_ but that sounds a little too mean and obvious considering he probably feels like absolute shit as well.

She stares for him for ages, taking in his messy hair and ruffled clothes, the pale, sickly tone to his skin. It’s hard not to pity him like this, slumped pathetically, a small patch of drool soaking into the pillow by the side of his mouth.

His glass of water with its fucking bendy straw on the table next to him.

Everything about him just screams _weak_ and _defeated_. So utterly unlike the Billy she knows, and the contrast makes her want to pull her hair out.  This isn’t the Billy she once admired or the one she grew to detest. This is just a _shell_ and she wants to shake some life back into him. Wishes he would roll his eyes like he’s too cool to respond to her, or yell or curse or just… _anything_ that might stir some emotion other than hollow, indefinable unease.

She gives up—shoulders deflating and sinking back into the couch with a long and dispirited sigh—admits she may need a little more time to adjust.

She’s pretty sure she still hates him, at bit at least.

But, _god,_ she can’t summon up the strength to feel angry with him right now. She’s too tired and he’s practically a zombie in this state. She could easily take the remote, change the channel, put on something she wants to watch.

But she doesn’t.

In the end she just sits with him and continues to watch the crappy movie even after she’s sure he has fallen asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should probably note that the length of my chapters will fluctuate. I usually plan for around 5k-8k words but sometimes I go overboard. 
> 
> Hope you enjoyed! Please leave a review!
> 
> Tumblr @cherry-toxic
> 
> (Title taken from Hatebreed's Before the Fight Ends You


	3. steve - part one

Mrs Nelson isn’t even trying to hold the class’s attention. Her voice is flat and monotonous; washing straight over the heads of every student sat slouched in their seats, doodling on papers or staring vacantly out the window with their feet kicked out. Graduation is less than a month away and Senioritis has begun its circulation among the class of ’85; infecting one by one all those who studied hard and handed in their work on time—dropping face-first into that final motivation-slump as the smell of freedom grows stronger.

Steve Harrington is not one of those people. Because Steve Harrington is a dumbass who spent too much of his senior year _distracted_ and didn’t pull his finger out of his ass until the last minute.

Now he’s got to pray his makeup work is enough to scrape a passing grade.

He scrubs at his brow and looks at the lines of his sloppy handwriting across the paper on his desk.

He just needs a C. That’s it. He’s fairly confident it’s in the bag, thanks to the notes Nancy put together for him. Anything that Nancy has a hand in, however minimal, is worth at least a C.

He tells himself that—uses the same self-assured and convincing tone he uses when meeting a girl’s parents for the first time—over and over, hoping he can override the crushing sense of doubt and impending failure he’s become familiar with.

It doesn’t really work. He isn’t King Steve anymore and no matter which positive thoughts he tries to channel this new Steve spends more time than he would like to admit doubting almost every decision he’s ever made.

Maybe that’s a little dramatic. Possibly. He’s never been the most enthusiastic student, never cared too much for grades when he always figured his future was laid out in front of him; he could coast by on minimal effort and still have a cushy job working for his dad at the end of it.

But then _that day_ —Saturday November 4th—happened and minimal effort gradually became _no_ effort.

He honestly hadn’t thought it’d affected him that much, like, yeah sure, he was shook up—they _all_ were—and he didn’t sleep for like a week afterwards, but his face had been in _agony_ —thanks to some prick with a mullet—and his heart in pieces.

Apparently wallowing in self-pity is a grade-A solution for warding off the effects of trauma.

That’s what Hopper had called it—trauma—two months after the 4th when Steve was teetering on the edges of a mental breakdown. That’d been a low point—it wasn’t pretty and Steve cringes at the memory—thank God for Hopper; if it weren’t for his intervention then Steve has no doubt in his mind that he would be repeating his senior year.

And Jesus that would’ve been the worst. He might not have high expectations of himself, his parent’s might not either, but at the very least they figured he would graduate with the rest of his year. His dad threw a fit when he told them he had make-up work. _“Jesus H Christ, Steven, what happened to buckling up? The hell are you doing when we’re not here?”_

The bell rings and his classmates gather their things and begin trudging towards the door. Steve stands slowly, waiting for the last of them to leave before he approaches Mrs Nelson’s desk; his paper clutched in clammy hands. The second he presents it to her he sees the grey smudge of pencil and numerous wrinkles on the white page.

“Um.” Mrs Nelson sees it too, her lips pressing together. He almost snatches his hand back. “My essay. For the final assignment?” He says real smooth.

Mrs Nelson takes it from him. “How did you find it?” she asks, pushing her thick-framed glasses up her nose and squinting at the words. God he hopes it’s readable.

“Uh, good—yeah—fine I think.” _Better than the first attempt._

“That’s good to hear. I’m glad you’ve been taking your studies more serious lately,” she peers up at him knowingly over her glasses and Steve feels the weight attached to the word _lately_ and he shifts his feet. “I would’ve liked to have this level of productivity sooner…”

“Yeah, I know, just—rough year is all,” he says lamely, like he couldn’t have thought up a better excuse after all this time.

Mrs Nelson smiles kindly, but Steve sees the tic at the corner of her mouth that signals _disappointment_ and he hopes he’s not about to get another _talk_. He really can’t deal with another one of those. Fortunately, she spares him this time.

“Well let’s see if we can end the year on a high note. I’ll have this back to you tomorrow.” And Steve nods, accepts that no more can be done and tries not to worry too much as he heads off towards the gym for last period.

Basketball season has long since ended but Coach Wattson keeps up practise—says he can’t have any of them getting too lazy just because it’s nearly summer—so Steve has the pleasure of spending the next forty-five minutes surrounded by people who think he’s a washout now.

Well not surrounded. Matt, Greg and Michael are still cool with him; Adam and Riley are okay so long as Tommy doesn’t start cracking any jokes at his expense—they’ll join in on the sniggers otherwise—but most of the others are a part Tommy and Billy’s circle (or they’re trying to be a part of it) and if Tommy and Billy think something—or someone—is lame; then so do they.

Gym used to be his favourite class.

Roaring laugher greets him as he enters the locker room and he falters mid-step—his defences rising on instinct—before he realises nobody is even looking at him. Most of them are huddled at the far end near the showers in various stages of undress, howling over some dumbfuck joke, so Steve elects to stay up the front end, choosing a spot on the bench opposite next to Matt and Greg, and starts stripping out of his clothes.

Apparently Rob fingered Courtney Turner over the weekend while her parents were in the room next door, and apparently that is hilarious and news to be shared with the entire basketball team. Rob dishes out the details happily; embraces the hoots and slaps on the back when he boasts how Courtney had been _so, so wet_ and his fingers were _like prunes_ afterwards.

 _Jesus_.

He used to be just like that. A total romantic out in the open, but once alone with the boys he always buckled under their relentless prodding and he’d be a liar if he claimed not to have smirked when they cheered and whooped to his conquest.

Nancy had changed him, and even after she left his side he couldn’t go back to his old ways. The excitement of being King Steve, the attention, the admiration; it’s all water under the bridge, and the locker-room talk just leaves him with sour taste in his mouth.

He changes quickly, hurries out onto the court and starts his warm-up. It’s only when coach calls them together after stretching that Steve notices Billy is missing and he realises he hasn’t heard his loud-ass mouth ringing down the halls at any point during the day.

A blessing really.

The likelihood of him being knocked on his ass before practice lets out is halved.

 

 

He isn’t purposely looking but Steve notices the absence of Billy’s Camaro in the parking lot the following morning.

He doesn’t think on it too much. Honestly Steve hasn’t had to think about Billy Hargrove a lot at all in the past couple of months. Billy finally grew bored of him sometime back in March after too many failed attempts at antagonizing him; poking a dead bird with a stick is only fun for so long. Aside from a little rough play on court and sneers in the locker-room he barely gave Steve a second more of his time.

And that’s one comfort that Steve can cling too safely—at least he’s not losing any _physical_ fights.

He thinks mostly about the English essay he handed in yesterday. All creased up and smudgy. Fuck he hopes it’s better than it looked; if he was being graded for presentation then he’s easily failed.

He shakes his head as if it might derail that train of thought—he wants to believe he’ll graduate smoothly, that his parents will praise him and hang a picture of him with his cap and diploma in the living room and maybe even help him prepare for interviews at he the jobs he’s applied for. Presuming his resume is proficient enough to earn him a call back that is.

“Yo, Steve!” A hand clamps on shoulder and Steve jumps, his hands jerking in surprise and cracking his knuckles into the locker he was just about to open. He hears someone cackling when he hisses, pain blossoming in his hand and he shakes in out uselessly.

“Who you daydreaming about?” A voice coos suggestively, and Chris Newton clad in a pale blue polo slides into Steve’s field of vision, leaning up against the row of lockers with an amused smirk.

“Your mom.” Steve deadpans, and Chris barks out a laugh.

“Really?” He teases. “I’ll let her know. Dad might have something to say about it though.” He tips his head to the side thoughtfully. “But then again when doesn’t he?” And Steve snorts, having had his ear talked off by Mr Newton on more than one occasion at the country club his parents occasionally drag him to. The man sure loves the sound of his own voice.

Chris isn’t like that though. He has the whole look of a spoiled, self-absorbed rich boy but unlike Steve, Chris never really flaunted his assets to impress and was the hardworking, college-bound boy his parents always wished he could be. AP classes, yearbook committee, captain of the lacrosse team; an all-round kind of guy who could be friends with anyone.

Steve might be richer and he definitely has the better hair, but neither of those things are really keeping him afloat anymore so it’s hard not to be a little envious.

“S’up anyway?” he says casually, pulling open his locker and dumping his science book inside.

“Tiffany B’s got a free house at the end of the month,” Chris informs him, crossing his arms and tapping his fingers on his elbow. “She’s planning on throwing a graduation party. You think you might come to this one?”

“Thought we graduated the week after?”

Chris shrugs. “Pre-graduation then. Whatever.” He pauses and grins playfully. “You _are_ graduating aren’t you?”

Steve rolls his eyes. “Yeah, of course.” _Barely._

“Good good. Then you’ll have plenty of reason to celebrate with the rest of us!” he says cheerfully, pouting when Steve doesn’t answer—digs him in the arm and whines, “come _on_ , man, we don’t see you anymore.”

“Yeah well, I don’t get personally invited so much anymore…”

“ _Tiffany_ asked me to ask you, she didn’t want to do it herself ‘cause you keep turning them down.”

Steve pulls a face. He hasn’t turned _that_ many invitations down—like maybe three since _November_ and he went to the last party at Melanie’s house over Spring break. It’s not like he’s skipping out on wild raves every weekend; Hawkins isn’t that lively.

“I turned them down because Tommy and Hargrove kept trying to start shit with me and I couldn’t be bothered dealing with it,” Steve says blandly, a half-lie.

“That was ages ago, Steve. They ain’t bothered with you for a while now.”

Steve shuts his locker and smiles brightly. “Yep. Because I’m too boring now.”

“Oh my god,” Chris groans, rolling his head back dramatically. “Just come to the fucking party. We’ll be out of here soon enough and that calls for celebration—don’t let those assholes ruin it.”

“Alright, alright,” Steve surrenders, shouldering his bag and starts making his way towards class while Chris whoops. “I’ll go. But if they try and start anything with me I’m leaving.”

Chris flings his arm over his shoulder and drags him into a rough half-hug.

“Atta boy Stevie!” Ruffling his hair and laughing when Steve squirms away. “Y’know, technically Hargrove shouldn’t even be invited because he’s a junior and—oh! _Shit_. That reminds me—“ Chris’s eyes light up and he creeps into Steve space again. “—I’ve got some interesting news for you. Y’know Charlie Higgins?”

Steve raises an eyebrow questionably.

“Yeah.” He knows _of_ him. Charlie’s a junior and not particularly popular, but his mom is the manager at a popular burger joint opposite the Hawk and she’s well known for kicking out unruly high-schoolers when they get too boisterous. Steve remembers feeling her stink-eye on the back of his neck that day he’d helped clean the marquee after he spray-painted _Nancy the SLUT Wheeler_ up there for the entire town to see.

“Well, Charlie’s in yearbook with me, and this morning he tells me his mom took his little brother to A&E on Saturday night because he was barfing everywhere—stomach bug or something—anyway, _apparently_ she saw Hargrove in the waiting room _covered_ in blood.”

Steve feels his eyebrows shoot up to his hairline. “Really?” Now that is… interesting.

“Yeah. Noticed he hasn’t been in school?”

He has noticed but he doesn’t admit to it, asking instead, “does he know what happened?”

“ _’Covered in blood’_ was all I got, but he said his mom had to wait a little whereas Hargrove was seen straight away so it can’t be something minor,” Chris tilts his head, tongue poking at his cheek, “…probably picked a fight with someone bigger than him for a change.”

Steve doesn’t bother to point out that he is technically bigger than Billy—he has a whole inch on him thank you very much—because he knows that he looks like a noodle next to Billy’s bulk of muscle, and that was a fight nobody had expected him to win after his humiliating defeat to Jonathon the year before. When you’ve already had your ass handed to you by the school freak getting pulverized by someone like Billy was just predictable.

Steve knows first-hand Billy fights vicious and dirty—he’s got a lovely scar to prove it—and it’s difficult for him to picture Billy _covered in blood_. There’s a huge possibility that that’s an exaggeration, but Billy’s absence at school confirms it must have been somewhat serious.

“Unless it was someone else’s blood and he’s actually been arrested for murder,” Steve says thoughtfully after a moment and Chris snorts.

“I wouldn’t it past him,” he mutters in distaste—like Steve wasn’t joking. His tone summons about a rush of cheap satisfaction, pleased to know some of his peers have started to catch on regarding Billy, even if they were months late. There were a few—other than himself, Nancy and Jonathon—who sensed from the beginning that there was something more dangerous lurking beneath the standard bad boy image Billy projected, and it had been frustrating for them to watch the rest of the school fawn over him.

The change had been slow, Billy still impressed the masses with his drunken antics and freakishly fit body— _seriously_ Steve has never seen a high-schooler look like _that_ —and no matter what he did Tommy, Carol and a handful of others lapped it up with glee but, gradually, there was a shift in opinions, and even Billy’s impressive keg records and his devious smirk that made half the girls wet in their panties weren’t enough to distract from his frequent bursts of impulsive and erratic behaviour.

People are wary of him; his status as top dog held aloft more through fear than admiration these days.

“Aight. I got math, so catch you later.” Chris slaps Steve on the back in farewell and Steve nods, _see you_ , and continues straight ahead to English; sliding into his usual seat near the back of the room.

He promptly switches off when Mrs Nelson greets them, flipping open his notebook even though he has zero intentions of writing anything down. His mind keeps wandering back to Billy and—by extension—Max.

He hasn’t seen her since Saturday, at the little get-together at the Byers place—because that’s something that they do now every month or so—the _Survivor’s Party_ as Steve likes to morbidly call them. Only to himself of course. He tries not to be a major buzzkill in front of the brats.

Dustin was the one who roped him into going the first time after he’d given Nancy a lopsided smile and an ambiguous _“maybe, might be busy, I’ll get back to you”_ only he never got back to her because he knew his answer was _no_.

Dustin however doesn’t like being told _no_. He mithered and pestered— _“Steve, come onnn, you’re part of the team, the gang, the par-tay”—_ and Steve had relented only to make him shut the fuck up.

It hadn’t sucked. Well it _had_ , because it meant he was stuck in the house he’d almost died in— _twice—_ with a bunch of middle-schoolers, his ex-girlfriend and her new guy, and his mom. Like, there was no way that _wasn’t_ going to be weird, but after the fidgety first hour he’d managed to settle, finding himself drawn into whatever dumb discussions the kids were having; Nancy and Jonathon respectfully kept their hands off of each other and Mrs Byers was a pretty damn good host so he figured he had no real reason not to keep going back.

It would be easier if Hopper were there, he thinks—having another guy around who isn’t thirteen or screwing his ex, but El has been back on the low-down since her sudden reappearance last year and Hopper doesn’t like to leave her alone. Which means they get the pleasure of listening to Mike complaining ( _“Why can’t El come? … It would be better if El were here … I swear Hopper is keeping her prisoner …”)_ like they aren’t whispering to each other every night over the radio and like, Steve _gets_ it, he really does, but what part of _escaped-experiment-wanted-by-the-government­_ isn’t sinking into that kid’s skull?

Max is always there, her place in the party secured the moment she’d stabbed Billy in the neck with a needle loaded with sedatives. They never really spoke about it, funnily enough; she’d just nodded at him the first time, asked _“my dick-bag step-brother leaving you alone?”_ and Steve couldn’t help but be impressed.

And a little stung too because he had to be rescued by a thirteen year old girl, but mostly impressed.

If Billy had continued to persistently bother Steve like he’d done his first week then he might’ve gone completely off the rails. He’s grateful to Max for that. He really doesn’t have to worry about him so much anymore, not for himself anyway—Steve only has to go to school with Billy; Max has to live with him.

He wishes he’d asked Chris if he’d heard who was with Billy at the hospital, if there was anyone. He knew Jonathon drove Max home on Saturday, along with Nancy and Mike, they’d been saying their goodbyes to Will and Mrs Byers as Steve left with Dustin and Lucas around 7:30 so… maybe she wasn’t involved at all. He hopes she hadn’t had to see whatever dumb thing Billy did to land himself in A&E. He knows Billy’s still at least somewhat of a dick to her; half the school has witnessed him screeching at her across the parking lot and Steve’s not the only one who has commented on how fucked up it is.

He feels a cold flicker of anger spark in his veins.

She shouldn’t have to put up with Billy’s shit. Any of it.

Steve’s pauses when the bell rings, his chest constricting when he suddenly remembers his essay; anger fizzling out and nervousness igniting. _Wake up, Harrington, you have your own issues to attend to._

He waits for everyone to clear out—doesn’t really desire an audience around to see him potentially crash and burn—and puts on his calmest façade like his stomach isn’t doing somersaults. Mrs Nelson is ready and waiting for him, hands clasped together over his crumpled assignment. His eyes linger on the tips of red ink peeking out from beneath her fingers; his fate well and truly resting in her hands, he thinks like a dramatic bitch.

“So am I gonna be sticking around for another year?” He shoots for comical but his tone falls rather flat and a little desperate. Mrs Nelson’s lips pull into the slightest of smiles, and fuck he hopes that’s not a _sit-down-while-I-deliver-the-worst-news-you’re-going-to-hear-today_ kind of smiles. Those are the worst kind, and Steve’s sure he’s about to have an aneurysm when she slowly unclasps her hands, placing her fingertips on his paper and  _slowly_ spinning it to face him as if she thinks this intense build-up is good for his health and

Steve feels the relief flood into him.

There it is.

His beautiful C.

He’s never felt so pleased to see one.

 

There’s almost a bounce in his step when he exits the building ten minutes later.

Mrs Nelson had seemed sad when he reacted so positively.

And, okay, maybe it is a _little_ sad to be thrilled when he’s _just_ scrapping out of high school, but it’s the best Steve had hoped for at this point. He isn’t college material; he figured that out a long time ago, so a passing grade is good enough. In a matter of weeks, school and all the stress and pressure that come with it will all be in the past, and Steve can breathe easy knowing he never has to muddle his way through another Shakespeare sonnet again.

No more stupid shitty drama. That in itself calls for a celebration. Even the weather is on his side. April had seen endless days of dark, heavy clouds unleashing heavy wind-driven torrents of rain; the biting chill of winter lingering in the air far outstaying its welcome. But May. May’s bringing the clear skies and sunshine; May’s going to be so much better. He can _feel_ it.

His ears perk up just as he reaches his car when the familiar growl of a certain Camaro rumbles over the parking lot, and Steve searches for the source; shielding his eyes from the sun with his hand. He quickly finds it, squinting when light glints of the roof, over outside the middle school. He can barely make out the figures milling around but Max’s flaming hair is a dead-giveaway and he watches her carefully as she hurries around the car and ducks into the passenger seat.

He strains his eyes uselessly, the figure in the driver’s seat undistinguishable, and drops his hand. He’s about to turn away when he sees—to his surprise—Jonathon Byers  approaching the Camaro and tapping on the window on the driver’s side.

He feels like a bit of a freak staring so intently towards the middle school, but he finds himself too curious to care. Steve can’t recall a single moment when he’s seen or even heard of Jonathon and Billy interacting with one another—which is kind of surprising considering Jonathon seems like the exact type of person a bully like Billy would target. The exchange barely lasts a minute but there’s no shouting or swearing to be heard and when Jonathon pulls away he does this weird little wave and Steve is pretty sure that Billy is _not_ present in the car.

The Camaro drives away slowly and Jon and Will are making their way over to the parking lot. He could just ask them what the hell that was about, but he reminds himself that it’s not really any of his business and he probably shouldn’t be actively trying to make anything that concerns Billy Hargrove his business in the first place. He’s just secured himself safe passage out of high school so

Best not ruin that too quickly.

He drives around aimlessly for a while, windows rolled down an inch to let the cool wind mess with his hair. He feels elevated, tapping his fingers on the wheel and singing along to Wham! and he almost wishes he had someone to celebrate with but he’s not sure exactly who would share his enthusiasm. He can already picture his dad’s profound dissatisfaction and his mom’s half-assed cheeriness so going home is pretty pointless unless he wants his good mood ripped straight out of his hands. Nance will tell him she’s happy for him, she’ll do it in that voice she once used to say _I love you too_ back when he was still too infatuated to smell the bullshit.

He decides on ice-cream. Because ice-cream won’t judge him.

He’s in his car outside Dairy Queen when Steve spots Hopper’s Chevy coming into the parking lot and he waves his arm out the open door, signalling for his attention.

“Hey Hop!” Steve grins when he pulls up in the parking space one over from him and climbs out.

“Harrington,” he nods as he shuts the door, putting on his hat and walking calmly around to face him. “Nice to see you out in the open and not in the woods.”

Steve laughs around a mouth full of ice-cream. “Speak for yourself. You spend a lot of time out there if I remember right.” Hopper gives him an annoyed look and Steve just chuckles at him again. He’s grown used to that look.

“Tch, I’m a cop. It’s my job to patrol my town.”

“At 2am?”

“Shut it, Harrington,” Hopper says gruffly but with no real bite. He leans back against the blazer and pulls his cigarettes out of his pocket. “I’m just keeping an eye on things.”

“And that’s all I was doing too.”

“We _agreed_ that you call me if you started thinking of doing stupid shit,” Hopper says, using the cigarette tucked between his fingers to point at him before jabbing it between his teeth. “You been alright since?” He asks, watching Steve carefully as he lights up.

“Yeah actually.” It’s a half truth. Yeah, he might’ve been stressing to hell and back about school but he hasn’t had another freak-out since their last meeting and that’s what Hopper is really getting at. “I finished all my make-up work.”

Hopper flicks his lighter off and takes a long drag. “Passed your English?”

“Yup. A good old C—thought I’d reward myself with some ice-cream,” he gestures to his half eaten Dairy Queen Blizzard and smiles broadly, taking another scoop.

“Uh huh.”

He exhales slowly and gives Steve a long lazy stare like he’s trying to catch a lie. Normally he might have sniffed one out but for once Steve feels like he has nothing to hide. He’s genuinely _okay_ with _just_ graduating; he was never college bound anyway so why everybody seems to suddenly have higher expectations for him is a mystery.

He’s ready for it to all be over.

“You thought anymore about what you’re gonna do?” Hopper asks, and Steve recalls the last time they spoke was nearly a month ago after one of his _episodes_ led to them colliding in the woods—Hop nearly shot him and Steve came _this close_ to crushing his skull with the bat so… there hadn’t been a lot of general chit-chat shared that night.

“I’ve actually applied for a few places at the new mall.” Steve tells him.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, few shops and this ice-cream parlour, and uh, a hot-dog place too.” He hopes he doesn’t end working at either of the last two; they always come with the worst uniforms. Dustin insisted he applied for them—seems to think he’ll get free food out of it—and Steve didn’t see what harm it could do, he’ll turn them down if he gets the job at Sam Goody anyway.

“Huh, good for you, kid,” Hopper says around his cigarette and Steve can’t tell if he’s being sarcastic or not. Hop rolls his eyes at him, plucks his cigarette out of his mouth and taps off the ash. “Seriously, I mean it. Retail and food are decent places to get experience. And it’s good that you’re being independent.”

 _Independent_ feels like a bit of a stretch but Steve accepts the compliment anyway. “Yeah, I guess. It’ll get my dad off my back for a while anyway.”

“He still giving you shit?”

“Bounces between that and ignoring me. S’fine. They’re off on business again next week anyway.”

Hopper’s brows pinch together tightly. “They gonna be back for your graduation?” And Steve is honestly flattered that he cares.

He’d once thought that Hopper didn’t like him that much—only tolerating him because he was one of the ‘party’—but surprisingly he turned out to be the person who helped him the most when Steve felt like he was going off the deep end. It was accidental at first, chance meetings that Steve tried to playoff as restless midnight drives until Hopper caught him red-handed creeping around the outskirts of old Merrill’s farm with his nail bat and he hadn’t any excuses to offer up but it was okay because Hopper just _understood_.

He figures it’s sort of like how Steve feels towards the kids. He’d risked his life to keep those brats safe and even though the danger might’ve passed he can’t shake off those protective and—dare he say it— _fond_ feelings for them. And Hopper—he _gets_ that. He gets why Steve sometimes struggles to sleep, or why he’ll suddenly get a crucial need to go looking for monsters that were supposedly gone.

He saw right through Steve’s bullshit from the get-go and while that might’ve initially horrified him, it turned out to be exactly what Steve needed. His parents hadn’t noticed of course; they didn’t notice shit aside from his grades taking a nose dive and all they’d offered him were lectures.

“Yeah they said they’d be back by then,” Steve shrugs indifferently. It wouldn’t entirely surprise him if they don’t return, and its strange realising that that wouldn’t really bother him too much. They spent more time away than they did at home these days.

He briefly wonders if Hopper would come in their place if they don’t show before he shakes the thought away and scoops up another spoonful of ice-cream loaded with cookies. “How’s El?”

“Same as usual. Bored but she’s reading a lot more now. She’s just started _Treasure Island_.”

“Yeah? That’s awesome,” Steve says like he’s read it. Honestly he hasn’t read most of the books he’d seen stacked up in Hopper’s cabin despite many of them being apparent children’s classics; books were just never really his thing. But it’s cool that El likes them, since she hasn’t got an awful lot to do stuck out in the cabin.

“Mmm, y’know what the main character is called?” Hopper asks looking unamused. Steve shakes his head. “Jim Hawkins—yeah, real funny, kid,” he adds when Steve laughs.

“ _Jim Hawkins_. It sounds like, your _hero_ name or something,” Steve chuckles and Hop gives him an exasperated look. “I suppose that’s the real reason why you’re patrolling. Keeping the monsters away from us innocent civilians—“

“Gimmie a break, shithead,” Hopper huffs, smoke slithering from between his lips.

“Yes Mr Hawkins, Sir,” Steve grins with his spoon sticking out of his mouth and Hopper looks _so_ bored. “You shouldn’t have told me that.”

“Yeah I shouldn’t have.” He drops the cigarette butt to the ground and crushes it beneath his heel. “I gotta run but, let me know if you get one of those jobs by the way. I—we’ll come down and visit you when the mall opens.”

Steve freezes mid-bite. _We._

“Wait. You mean El—” he blinks before his face splits into a huge smile “—seriously, Hop, that’s great! Does this mean she’s like, safe now?”

“It’s as safe as she ever going to be. The lab’s shut permanently and it looks like surveillance in the area has ceased so… it’s now or never, I guess.”

He sounds apprehensive and Steve can understand _why_ —there’s always going to be some degree of risk when a little girl with superpowers is involved but he’d chance it all if it meant El could have a taste of freedom. He really doesn’t know her that well, not like the kids do, but he’s heard her story and when Hopper first brought him back to his cabin she’d approached him with wide, curious eyes and asked _“you’re Steve?”_ —and when he’d nodded she simply stated _“friend_ ” and Steve had wanted to give her the world.

She deserves the world and a normal life in it.

“Does this mean I don’t have to listen to Mike pining over her anymore? That little shit’s been driving me insane.”

“You and me both,” Hopper says wearily, pinching the bridge of his nose as if just the memory of Mike Wheeler’s voice causes him physical pain. “And they don’t know yet. Even El. I spoke to Owens on Saturday but then I got called into work and it got a little hectic so I haven’t got round to telling her.” He scratches his beard and then gestures over to the Dairy Queen. “I was, gonna grab some burgers and—let her know tonight and… take it from there.”

He looks a little awkward and Steve finds it kind of endearing. “Get her one of these,” he suggests, holding up his Blizzard. “And uh, tell her she can come around my place when summer starts. Dustin’s already demanded use of the pool so… she’s welcome to come too.”

Hopper’s lips curl into a smile. “I’ll pass on the message.” He pushes himself away from the Chevy and stalks over to Steve’s car, resting his elbow on the door. “You keep your head down and focus on finishing school, alright. You’re a good kid, Steve. I don’t wanna be catching you on private property again—next time you start feeling weird you _call_ me before you go wandering off.”

“Alright alright…”

“I _mean_ it—“

“Okay!” Steve holds his hands up in surrender dramatically, “I’ll call you, I promise. Keep your damn hat on.”

“Alright.” He gives Steve a deep, thoughtful look and then he’s pulling away, rapping his knuckles against the glass twice. “I’ll see you around—“

“Wait—“ Hopper stills and turns back to him and Steve holds out his empty ice-cream cup with a shit-eating smile. “Can you throw this is the trash for me?” He wouldn’t want to litter.

Hopper’s grumbling _“little shi—“_ but he snatches the cup from his hand anyway and starts stomping off across the carpark while Steve snickers to himself.

He swings his feet inside the car and flips down the sun visor, checking his hair in the little mirror.

He tries to picture El’s face when Hopper tells her she doesn’t need to hide anymore, a smile curling onto his face. How the hell Hop managed to keep that news to himself since Saturday he doesn’t know; he could’ve shown up at the Byers place with El and broke the news to everyone—

Steve pauses in the middle of combing his fingers through his hair; a puzzle piece he didn’t realise was missing slips into place.

He scrambles to get back out of the car. “Hey! Hey Hop—hang on a sec!”

He ends up jogging across the carpark to where Hopper waits for him, lazily tossing Steve’s cup in the trash and folding his arms impatiently.

“You. You said you got called into work on Saturday?” Hopper frowns and gives a short nod and Steve swallows, knowing this isn’t really any of his business but—“that have anything to do with Billy Hargrove by any chance?”

Hopper’s face goes slack jawed for a moment. “How the hell’d you—oh wait. Let me guess… high-school gossip right? Christ don’t you kids having anything better to talk about…”

Steve chooses to ignore the insult. “So it _did_ have something to do with him,” and Hopper rolls his eyes, “I heard he was at A&E on Saturday night _‘covered’_ in blood _,”_ using air quotations for emphasis.

“You worried about Hargrove now?”

Steve pulls a face. “Um, no? I was thinking more about Max. I haven’t had chance to talk to her. I saw her getting into Billy’s car after school but I don’t think he was the one driving.” He’s pretty certain it wasn’t.

Hopper scoffs. “Yeah, no, he won’t be driving anywhere soon I can tell you that much.” Which doesn’t really tell Steve anything other than Billy got fucked up and badly too by the sounds of it.

“Shit, is he—alright?” Great. Now he does sound worried.

“He’ll live,” Hopper says, tucking his hands into his pockets casually although his face drops into a frown. “Though I wouldn’t expect to see him around for a while.”

“Right…” There’s a quiet, reflective pause where Steve rocks awkwardly on his feet, lips pressing together as he thinks for something to say that won’t make him sound outright nosy. “And Max?”

“She’s fine. A little shuck up. But she’s tough.” And yeah, Steve knows that, but now he also knows that something went down on Saturday night and Max was around to see it. Hopper watches him carefully, pokerfaced with just the slightest hint of amusement turning the corner of his lips. “You behave like a mother-hen around those kids sometimes.”  

Steve’s face transforms into a grimace. “Jesus, please don’t say that,” he mutters, reminded painfully of Saturday when Dustin and Lucas cheerfully asked him what he wanted for Mother’s Day next weekend. It’s a repetitive joke by now, one with Steve’s thinks he should be used to, and it’s kind of _true,_ but it still leaves an uncomfortable itch under his skin as much as he tries to find the humour in it. Steve Harrington, once the most popular and desired guy in school, now world’s best mom. He’ll have a mug like the one Mrs Byers owns soon. He waves his hands dismissively, starts to make his leave. “Okay, fine, whatever—long as Max is okay. ‘Was just checking.”

Hop calls out before he makes it more than a few steps backwards. “She’s good. But they’re going through a, uh,” his jaw wiggles as if he’s jostling the words around in his mouth, “ _bumpy_ patch,” and he pauses like _bumpy_ wasn’t the right choice but he doesn’t bother to correct himself. He sighs quietly, his shoulder dropping a fraction. “Don’t go making a big deal out of it or anything. Just… keep it to yourself.”

 

 

Steve does keep it to himself but it’s not like the rumour mill of Hawkins high needs his input.

The news that Billy had been in hospital spreads like a wildfire and by the time the final bell rings on Wednesday afternoon, Steve has heard several versions of how he ended up there. They deviated wildly in credibility—some were outright ridiculous, like, Billy might be a little psychotic but there was no way he was organized enough to run an illegal underground fighting ring, how the hell do people think up with this shit seriously—but the two most plausible reasons were A. Billy had gotten into a fight with the doorman up at Harry’s bar and Steve _could_ have believed that since the guy who works the doors at Harry’s is a _beast_ and is well known for having broken the noses of a few unruly patrons, but that was all before he heard tale B.

Which was that Billy’s dad kicked the shit out of him.

With the little info he’d weaselled out of Hopper it made the most sense. Max once said her step-dad was a dick. But she’d also spent the following fifteen minutes talking about how _amazing_ her real dad was and Steve had simply figured she was bitter about being separated from him so he never thought to analyse the throwaway comment further. Most dads are dicks in their own ways. From the alcoholic Lonnie Byers to the useless Ted Wheeler; the majority fall on the latter end of the scale.

Steve’s dad is a dick but aside from the verbal lashings his worst punishments were grounding and taking away the keys to his beemer. Even in his vilest moods he’s never _hit_ him.

He tries to imagine what he would do in that situation. He thinks maybe he’d swing back—someone hits you, you hit them back—it’s _instinctive_. But then, that would depend on how hard they hit. If it’s just a slap then, maybe he wouldn’t. A slap would probably only startle him, not aggressive enough to trigger retaliation, a quick slap might even be preferable to the lengthy, disdainful lectures his dad loves dishing out.

He knows in the back of his mind that this was no slap though. _Covered in blood_. That bit of information might’ve been passed around like a game of telephone but everyone knows a slap doesn’t send someone to A&E. If the rumour’s true then Billy’s dad must’ve hit him _real_ hard.

He’s flicking aimlessly through the tapes he has in his car when the sound of raised voices breaks through his musings and his head snaps up, eyes searching for the source of the commotion. He finds Dustin immediately; waving his arms in the air and screeching like a lunatic from the other side of the parking lot trying to grab his attention, which he now has, and for a second Steve wishes the little freak could try to be a little more discreet in front of his peers, but then behind Dustin he spots Will and Max and—

 _Oh shit_.

His heart lurches into his throat and his tapes drop clumsily into his lap, hands fumbling at the door handle and he’s gracelessly dragging himself out of the car. He hears the clatter of plastic on concrete and feels one of the tape cases crunch beneath his foot, it almost sends him skidding across the ground but he miraculously manages to regain his balance and starts sprinting towards the kids and Tommy—fucking _Tommy_ —with his fucking _hand_ around Max’s wrist, and _Jesus_ , Steve is not thinking about this at all but Tommy needs to get the fuck off her or else he’s gonna…

He doesn’t know what he’s gonna do but it’ll probably be something stupid.

Max is trying to jerk herself free, face turned to the floor with her backpack sliding down her arm, and a flash of red crosses Steve’s vision when Tommy doesn’t let up, ignorant or uncaring to her obvious distress.

He doesn’t make it there first—he’s only halfway across the parking lot when Jonathon comes streaking from behind Tommy, his bag swinging into Carol who stumbles and yelps, and he seizes Tommy’s hand where he’s holding Max’s wrist, tugging and sending her staggering when Tommy doesn’t immediately let go.

“—the fuck? Byers?—“

“—let go of her!—“

Tommy abruptly releases Max—seizing Jonathon by the collar of his T-shirt as the two square up, snarling into each other’s faces—and she trips, stumbling with the momentum and hitting the ground painfully.

“—you wanna fucking _go_ , Byers?—“

“Hey—HEY!” Steve yanks Jonathon back and pushes himself into the space created between them and presses him palm against Tommy’s chest, “back off man!”

His hand is viciously smacked away and he’s sent stumbling backwards when Tommy shoves him.

“The hell you want, Stevie-boy! Come to protect your little chicks—“

“—Jesus Christ,” Steve mutters disbelievingly while shaking his head—he doesn’t have a fucking clue what is going on. He feels stupid, his heart is beating too quickly and it’s not because he just ran, he might be about to get his ass kicked and he doesn’t even know why but Max looks white as a sheet, clutching her wrist to her chest and staring with wide, panicked eyes. Will and Dustin flank her either side, their arms shielding her protectively despite their obvious fright.

Tommy’s snarling at him, batting at his hand and trying to push his way past him to Jonathon but Steve throws his arms back up each time, keeping himself planted firmly between them. He’s feels Jonathon’s presence at his back—hears the sharp puffs of breath near his ear and imagines the way his nostrils flare when he’s angry. “Jon, seriously, just go—take Max. _Go.”_  

“Steve—“

Steve jabs him with his elbow. “ _Go_!” He hisses and thankfully Jonathon does. “Oh no you don’t!” He sidesteps in front of Tommy, fingers pushing against his chest again and hoping he sounds intimidating. “Leave it, Tommy.”

“This ain’t any of your business Steve,” Tommy spits, totally not intimidated, and Steve’s sure he’s about to get punched when Carol of all people comes to his aid.

“Knock it off Tommy! Shit. You’re being a dick!”

“ _I’m_ being a dick?” Tommy howls angrily spinning away from Steve to face her, and Carol gives him her best _are you shitting me_ face. “Byers is the one who got up in my face—“

“Because you were threatening a kid.” And Tommy whirls back around to him, face splitting with fury. Nice job Steve, really diffusing the situation smoothly.

“The fuck? I wasn’t _threatening_ her. Was I threatening her?” He says to Carol who rolls her eyes.

He sounds like a brat. There are clumps of students hovering around, stood together at safe distances, whispering amongst themselves and probably wondering if today’s the day the former king and his former lackey square off for real.

“ _Whatever_ ,” Carol snaps and Steve sees a wad of pink gum in her mouth. She sticks her hands on her hips and glowers at Tommy like a parent scolding a naughty toddler. “You didn’t have to _grab_ her like that.”

“I was just asking her a question!”

“Why would you be asking her anything?” Steve finds himself demanding and Tommy sneers at him.

“Oh come _on_. You’re dumb but you’re not _that_ dumb.” Tommy scoffs, barbed ice in his tone making the skin on Steve’s forearms prickle. “You’ve heard the rumours about Billy—I just want to know the truth _._ He is my _friend_ , you know.” Like that justifies grabbing a fourteen year old girl at all.

“Yeah, okay, I _get_ that.” Steve starts, tries to keep the bite out of his tone because he doesn’t need Tommy laying him out before he’s bought enough time for Jon to get Max away. “But maybe hounding his little sister for information isn’t the best way to go about it? Have a little— _tact_ —y’know?”

The irony isn’t lost on him here; lecturing other people on being tactful, especially _Tommy_ , the guy he called his best friend throughout his most insensitive years.

He glances away quickly, catches the sight Max’s bowed head from a distance, Will close by her side ushering her into Jon’s beat up Ford and he breathes a sigh of relief. She’s away, she safe. Now he’s just got to worry about getting himself out of there without any bruises. It would be embarrassing for Dustin to see him get his ass handed to him twice.

He’s surprised when Tommy just stares at him, eyebrows pinched and shoulders taut, his chest heaving and hands curled into fists, like Steve is the most frustrating person he’s ever met. He’ll never quite get used to it, the barbs and snide comments are _whatever_ , just a part of who Tommy is, but they were best friends for years—they have history—and they once shared everything. He wonders if Tommy is sad about what they lost and the sneers and insults are to cover his hurt; his betrayal when Steve dumped him for Nancy. He refuses to feel guilty though. It’s not his fault Tommy couldn’t grow up.

“Do _you_ know what happened to him—Billy?” Tommy asks in an odd voice, as if it almost pains him to ask.

“Why would I know?”

“You take that kid home sometimes.” Carol interjects, nodding her head past Steve to where Dustin is still hovering. “He’s friends with Billy’s sister, right?”

“And what?” Steve scoffs, unconsciously inching to block Dustin from their view. “You think we talk about _Hargrove_ in my car?”

“I don’t know!” Carol snaps defensively. “He could have mentioned _something_. It _is_ kinda hot gossip right now in case you haven’t noticed.”

Gossip. Right.

He really wants to believe that Tommy and Carol _genuinely_ care about Billy’s wellbeing—like he believes they once cared about him too—but _sometimes_ their choice of words make him sceptical as hell. He doesn’t even _like_ Billy, but he finds himself hoping that at least one of the idiots who drool over him is sincerely worried.

“Listen.” He begins, purposely ignoring the unsteadiness in his voice because he just wants this over with so he can _leave_. “I don’t know any more than you do, alright?” They both look disappointed and for the wrong reasons. “Have you tried phoning him? Or driving over to his place?”

“Don’t have his number,” Tommy shrugs, “and he’s never invited anyone over before so…”

 _Great sounding friendship right there_. Steve shakes his head in amazement. “Okay. Well. I can’t help you.” He says, final and dismissive, turning to Dustin and nodding pointedly towards his car. “Come on.”

He spares Tommy one last glance, notes how his mouth opens like he wants to object but thinks better of it as soon as he realises there’s nothing more to be said. Steve lets out the shaky breath he was holding and follows Dustin to the beemer, grateful to escape unharmed.

His door is open a crack; three cassettes littering the ground, a spider web of cracks through the case of one. He picks them up and tosses them carelessly in the backseat, his door clicking shut and his shoulders slump when he settles, a wave of jitters spreading to his fingers. He feels nervous laughter bubble in his chest, swallows to block its path up his throat. Twenty-four hours ago he had a hop in his step and a brighter outlook on his future; certain he was set for smooth sailing until graduation. He only had to worry about not tripping when collecting his diploma. A day later and he almost ends up trading punches with a former friend and honestly sometimes Steve thinks he would rather take on real monsters than try his luck in a schoolyard brawl.

“Well that was unexpected,” he says eventually, after he’d managed to even out his breathing. “And dumb.” He adds in afterthought as he starts the engine.

"That guy is a dick,” Dustin says frankly, “how the hell were you best friends with him for so long."

Steve winces. "Well, I used to be a bit of a dick too…" he says admittedly, a long list of dickish things he once did springing to mind which he tries not to scroll through. It's a waste of time as this point to lament on his past actions when he has worked so hard to bury them.

"Yeah you were, but you're cool now." And yep, he's _cool_ , sure, to everybody but a handful of middle schoolers. He can’t believe how badly that encounter made him sweat; he feels like a dumbass for getting so worked up over Tommy, like the freckled fuck could really do anything than lower his reputation and with less than a month until they’re both out of here it hardly matters. He tries to play it off cool, swipes the sweat off his brow under the cover of running his hands through his hair.

"Is Max okay? Like, I mean, _before_ Tommy pounced on her."

Usually it's pretty hard feat to get Dustin to shut the fuck up—there's always _something_ on that's kids mind he’s desperate to share with and Steve is his favourite audience—but there’s a silence that stretches on too long and Steve doesn’t know if he's supposed to prod for answers. He waits patiently as Dustin fiddles with the strap of his seatbelt, pulling it loose and letting it snap back taut against his chest—stubbly nails scratching over the grooves in the polyester—face down so the visor of his cap shields most of his face.

“Uh, she’s. Okay.” He mumbles unsurely and Steve can just about see his lower lip sucked between his shiny, new _ish_ pearls. “Some stuff happened. On Saturday. I don’t actually know if I’m supposed to talk about it…”

“You don’t need to,” Steve reassures, “everyone else is. S’bout her brother, right.”

“Step-brother,” Dustin corrects, “but yeah. What are people saying?”

“There’s a few stories, but mostly about a fight outside a bar, or… his dad…”

“Well.” Steve glances out of the corner of his eye but Dustin’s looking pointedly forwards. “One of those is correct…”

“Yeah, I can guess which…”

Looks like Mr Hargrove isn’t the upstanding citizen he presented himself as after all. Steve’s only seen him a handful of times around town, proud and well dressed—clothes on the cheaper end but smart, the appearance of a hard-working American family-man; pretty wife obediently by his side. He could imagine him as strict, or a hard-ass even, but Steve wouldn’t have pegged him as abusive.

He’s itching to ask, about Max, about her mom— _did he hurt them too_ —but he doesn’t want to make Dustin feel pressured into answering. They take all that party shit seriously. Friends don’t lie. Friends don’t betray each other’s trust, and although Steve might be an honorary member, he’s not _in_ the party, not fully. One foot in, one foot out. He never expected anything else. They might be some of the best people he knows—not that he will ever admit that out loud—but he’s eighteen, a legal adult, and he can only be so involved with them without it looking creepy.

Billy himself has pointed that out several times.

The rest of the drive is relatively silent, Paul Young’s _Every time you go away_ playing quietly from the radio, Steve pulls his sun-visor down and taps his fingers on the steering wheel. He thought about telling Dustin his good news but the encounter with Tommy chased away the dregs of his excitement, reminded painfully that a lot can still go wrong in a month, especially when he’s got these kids who seem to attract trouble to look out for. “Hey man, let me know if Tommy or anyone bothers Max again, okay, I’ll…”

“Take a punch for us?” Dustin says bluntly, and yeah, okay, _fair_. Does he have to be so direct about it?

“I _mean_ it, shithead. It’ll probably all blow over in a week anyway; there’ll be something else to talk about,” he gives Dustin his best serious face as he pulls up outside his house. “But seriously. Tell me.”

The fact that he sounds almost exactly like Hopper did the day before outside Dairy Queen doesn’t escape him. _You behave like a mother-hen around those kids sometimes._ Sue him for giving a shit. Hopper is no better; taking on everyone else’s burdens because it gives him something to focus on.

Dustin claps his hand on his shoulder. “You’re a good man, Steve Harrington.” He says honestly, giving him a pat and Steve tries not to beam so obviously but fuck he loves the validation. He might have lost a few things after the night of the 4th but gaining this weird kid who looks up to him turned out to be an unexpected yet rewarding twist. It’s nice to feel respected, admired, like a mentor. Or maybe this is kind of what it’s like to have a little brother. He’s always wondered.

Dustin unclips his belt and reaches for the door handle, opening his mouth to ruin everything as always, “you know if you weren’t so bad at cooking you really would make a great mom—“

“GeT OUT.”

On second thoughts, Dustin can go to hell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the delay on this chapter but I kind of got swept up by all the s3 promos and then I was emotionally dead for about a week after watching it so...
> 
> I know s3 fix-it fics are in full swing right now but I hope there's still some interest in this!
> 
> Tumblr @cherry-toxic
> 
> (Title taken from Hatebreed's Before the Fight Ends You)


	4. billy - part two

Billy Hargrove is a crier.

He’ll deny it if asked. Where’s your proof? Have you ever _seen_ him cry? No, exactly. Shut up.

Crying is for girls and pussies and faggots, a sign of all the things a man is not supposed to be—what Billy is not supposed to be. Crying has only ever incited his dad’s cruel words, sliding off his tongue and seeping through Billy’s skin; spreading their poison in his veins. And Neil knows where to strike, where he cracks easiest, pries him open and exposes all that is soft and fragile and _weak_ , only to chastise him for its existence.

You’d think, with time—the _years_ he’s spent under Neil’s boots, watching and learning, through pain, through fear—that he’d have figured out how to _stop_ , but his methods, they’re all transitory. The backlog always catches up, an hour, a day, a week if he gets his hands on the right distractions, sooner or later he’ll angrily swipe the moisture off his cheeks, despising himself with every traitorous tear that leaks from his eyes, nothing more than a burning reminder of his own inadequacies. He’ll turn his music up louder, press his foot down harder on the accelerator, or lift weights until he feels like his arms might drop off.   _Anything_ to stop himself sinking deeper into the pit that opens up in his gut.

It’s strange and almost concerning when he hasn’t felt much of that. It’s the prime time for it; any altercation with his dad typically leaves him raw and emotional—an open wound—but it’s been three day since he was released from the hospital and so far he’s done little to nothing apart from float around the house like a drunken ghost, high on legal drugs and falling asleep on various pieces of furniture. He feels constantly exhausted, slouching when he sits and moving sluggishly when he stands; talking too much leaves him winded and nobody understands what the fuck he’s saying half the time anyway so conversation is a real dull affair, not that he’s ever had a great deal to say to either Max or Susan.

Max has mostly kept her distance, occasionally he catches her in the corners of his vision, edging around him cautiously like he might disintegrate if she were to breathe too loud. But it makes her easy to ignore so he does just that. Susan’s presence, on the other hand, has been near constant. She skitters about with needless concern, overbearing and eager to please, and yet Billy can’t summon up enough energy to do anything more than glare at her, and even those don’t last long since his face _aches_ all the time. Something inside him, deep and familiar, wants to scream at her, tell her to fuck off and stop smothering him, but whenever he tries to reach for that feeling, it shifts and he hasn’t the strength to chase it.

He knows the pain meds are at least partially responsible for his lethargic behaviour but he isn’t quite prepared to part with them for too long just yet; the pain is excruciating at its worst and sobriety brings with it too many unpleasant thoughts that Billy would rather not think on. It’s easier to swallow down his drugs and endure Susan’s awful mothering performance with only mild irritation than confront the nerve-tingling dread at the base of his skull.

His dad always said he was a coward.

“Did you sleep well?”

Susan greets him the moment he stumbles out of his bedroom; she’s wearing her bright and cheerful face today, a turn around from her glum demeanour the night before. He thinks she’s trying for that strong, independent woman act, and it makes his palms itch irritably. He spares her only the slightest of glances, grunts _“fine,”_ and continues his drowsy stagger to the bathroom. He needs to take a leak. He’s been holding it in for like an hour because he just wanted to go back to sleep and was too stubborn to accept that that wasn’t going to happen with his throbbing jaw and bladder ready to burst.

He washes his hands afterwards and stares miserably into the mirror above the sink. His whole mouth is puffed up and swollen, his lips jut out, pushed forward by the brace on his gums, and there’s a noticeable bulge protruding from his left side, like he’s been squirreling food away in his cheek. He looks like a fucking hamster. A scraggily, abused hamster.

He traces over the bruising around his eye; his dad sure got him good, he can’t even try to hide how crappy he feels because the truth is quite literally painted all over his face. Throw in the sickly pale complexion and his lank, oily hair and he’s in the running to be poster boy of some child abuse campaign.

He needs a shower. But first he needs his pain meds, and for that, he’s gotta eat.

The thought of what Susan might have concocted up for him today leaves him shuddering. She hasn’t left the house much; quick trips to the store, dropping Max off at school and picking her up—although she seems to have passed on the latter task to Byers, Billy saw his shitty car pulling up yesterday afternoon—and when she’s not fussing over him she seems to spend most of her time pottering around the kitchen, prepping Billy’s many meals for the day. They have a blender now. She bought it just for him, since almost everything he eats needs to be thinned and liquefied and topped with protein powder.

It’s past lunch but Billy reaches for a flask of plain oatmeal blended down with milk, smooth and creamy enough to be sucked through a straw, except he can’t do a great deal of _sucking_ yet, ‘cause that still hurts too much, so he’s left to eat using the same humiliating method they taught him at the hospital.

He collects his syringe from the rack it had been left to dry on, offers a wordless nod to Susan—gratitude for the prison mush—and takes his “food” and syringe to his room. Susan doesn’t follow him.  As resigned as he may be to his situation and Susan’s caretaker role, he’s been adamant that nobody gets to watch him eat. He might doze and drool and mumble dumb shit when he’s high—he _can’t_ control that—but he can control this. Which works out even since it’s by far the most embarrassing part.

He sits on his bed, peels back his lips and tucks the point of the nozzle into his cheek, trying not to let it scrape against his wires, and slowly presses down on the plunger. He’s better at it now, manages to keep the mess to a minimum, although the numbness in his lower lip allows for a few droplets to spill over, dribbling down his chin, and he dabs—gently—at them with back of his hand, wiping the grey streak onto his sweatpants. They’re black, it doesn’t matter. Not like he hasn’t been lounging around in them for two days anyway.

It takes over ten minutes to empty the flask and his lips are curling back in distaste when he pulls the nozzle out for the final time; his face pinching into a grimace at the aftertaste stuck to his tongue. His whole mouth feels grimy and stale and he dreads to think what his breath might smell like. He wants to brush his teeth so fucking badly; a real good scrub to chase away the sticky film layered over his gums but the best he currently has is a mouthwash he swirls around several times a day before spitting it down his chin.

He laughs in a defeated and self-loathing kind of way, head bowing and chin curling towards his chest—getting a good whiff of his ripe odour. Jesus, he _really_ needs that shower, but he also kind of wants to wash down a few painkillers and slip back into a blissful bubble of ignorance; broken jaws and bad hygiene don’t mean a thing when he feels like he’s floating right out of his body.

 

 

 “Was it okay?”

He dumps the flash in the sink, grunts “yeah” and rolls his eyes when Susan beams. He digs out his painkillers and grabs a glass, filling it with water from the tap.

“I’ve been reading some of these recipes,” she says, motioning to the pamphlets littering the dinner table. “You can actually thin down a lot of ordinary meals with tomato juice or milk. And _cereal_. Crushed up with ice-cream, I was thinking of making that today—“

Billy listens indifferently to her chatter, dropping a single pill into the glass and waiting for it to dissolve; it should be enough to ease the pain without turning his mind to mush. The last thing he wants is to collapse in the bathtub and have Susan come heave him out. The first day he knocked back his pills at home it took him ten minutes to convince her he could use the damn bathroom without assistance; coincidently the same amount of time it took to climb to his feet and wobble to toilet with her fretting the entire time, like she was gonna hold his dick for him while he peed.

The sudden sound of the phone ringing makes them both jolt, their heads slowly turning to the source of the noise—watching it warily as if it were a threat. It rings four times before Susan cautiously walks to where it hangs on the wall, her pale hand gingerly reaching out—slow, like it might bite her—and Billy watches with baited breath; his lungs stilling from apprehension.

“Hello? … Oh!” Her shoulders sag in relief. “Brenda, I—yes, I’m fine, thank you …  Yes … no, that’s alright, I—“

Billy lets out his breath slowly, allowing himself to relax. Brenda. Susan’s co-worker from the down at the shop. Of course. She’s had to take time off because of him. Because of their situation. Now she gets the pleasure of staying home with him, busying herself cooking and cleaning like she has the whole thing under control.

Like his dad wasn’t released last night.

Hopper rang not long after dinner to let them know. Reassured them he wouldn’t be coming by.

Apparently Susan had packed a bag for him and drove it down to the police station herself. That was a ballsy move, he’d give her that. But it doesn’t stop the threads of panic rooting in his skull, dread curling in chest; he feels it pulling at his skin, more so when he’s sober, and he wants to drag his nails down his arms and scratch the sensation away. He knows his dad too well. Knows in the back of his mind and pit of his stomach that it can’t be this easy… he’s not gonna just _fuck off_ because a woman and a little girl _told_ him to.

Like Billy has _never_ screamed or begged him to stop.

It usually only served to encourage him.

“— _are you crying, Billy?”_

_“—wailing like a little bitch—“_

_“—didn’t realise I’d raised such a faggot son—“_

Billy finds himself fixating on Susan’s dainty hands again, all pale and soft, wrapped delicately around the phone cradled to her ear, and something bitter and malicious curdles in his belly—green envy staining his vision.

Neil’s never walked away before, not from Billy, not from his mom—he always got the last word, pulled the final punch, because that’s how he maintains order in his family; keep the leashes taut so no one forgets their places. Susan’s place is submissively by his side, and he should have slapped the defiance out of her the moment it arose—her wrist locked in an iron grip and fingers digging bruises into her cheeks; cold, sharp words of threat and promise bringing her to heel.

Billy can picture _all_ the things Neil is capable of, he’s fucking felt every single one of them on his skin, and call him sick in the head but it seems only fucking _fair_ that punishment for stepping out of line is distributed _equally._ Does she even realise how easy she got off? To walk away without any bruises, Billy scoffs, he can only _dream_ , and she _chose_ this, chose Neil, moved half way across the country with him; Billy fucking _yearns_ to see her finally comprehend just what that means for her and Max—to see the fear and helplessness flash in her eyes. _You broke his rules and now you reap what you sow._

Except, a car rumbles past the house at that moment, slow and almost deliberate, and Billy freezes—the frustration evaporating in his lungs as his breath stutters—he waits for the engine to cut, for the sound of a door slamming, and heavy footsteps climbing the steps… his dad’s silhouette through the blinds…

Something creaks and his eyes dart to Susan, her body wound stiff, eyes glued on the door; the plastic phone protesting under her crushing grip.

She’s thinking what he’s thinking, he knows it, can see it in the deepening creases around her eyes, the way her lips twitch as she chews on her inner cheek, and how the tension bleeds from her shoulders when the car outside continues by without decelerating; not Neil, not today at least.

She finds her voice again. “Sorry, Brenda, could you say that again?”

Billy exhales, again, and loosens his death grip on the worktop, watches how the blood rushes back to his pale and jittery fingers before curling them into fists.

No matter how satisfying it might be, how _warranted;_ Billy still has his own fear to contend with. Seeing Susan get her just dues won’t save him from the lashing he’ll receive, won’t make the following year before he can escape any smoother; Neil can toss Susan and Max into hell with him but Billy will always be the fuck up of the family. He’ll always wear the biggest target.

He pulls a blue bendy straw from the party packet left on the side, dumping it in his glass and giving the cloudy water a stir. All dissolved. Good. He needs to unclench.

“That was Brenda,” Susan says, resting the phone back on its hook, Billy grunts through his teeth.  “She’s asked me to go in on Monday and maybe Tuesday; Miss Nolan needs some alterations for her dress before—”  she cuts herself off when she notices the look on Billy’s face because, hello, Billy doesn’t give a shit which bride-to-be piled on the pounds right before the big day. Keep up Susan. “You. You’ll be fine on your own for a few hours won’t you?” She sucks her bottom lip between her teeth. “I’ll do food-prep of course, and I’ll leave you the number for the store in case—“

“—I can wipe my own fucking ass, thanks,” Billy grits out, and Susan purses her lips—never was a fan of his potty mouth—before continuing.

“ _In case_ there’s an emergency. And, I’ll leave Chief Hopper’s too…”

She utters the last part quietly, ducking her head and letting her hair fall around her face, but Billy gets the message loud and clear this time; she means _emergency_ like his dad coming home with no one around to save his ass this time. He supposes she’s not entirely stupid enough to believe that a restraining order is going to hold Neil off forever. This is his house, regardless of both their names on the mortgage, and it’s filled with his possessions; his wife and children included. Neil’s always made that quite clear to Billy: until he’s eighteen he _belongs_ to him. Legally. And Billy’s still got another six months until then, and his senior year to complete before he can snatch his diploma and _go_.

Susan shakes her head, gives him her attempt at a brave smile. “You shouldn’t need to use them though. I’ll only be a few hours.”

_Oh Susan. You dumb naïve bitch._

He thought she had a brain for a second there.

“So if there’s an _emergency_ ,” Billy says slow and derisively, forcing as much sarcasm and cynicism as he can into his distorted voice, “I just give you a call and you’ll come running?” Susan’s smile slips away, and she hunches her shoulders a little. _There she is, little coward._ He stirs his straw around some more, eyes never leaving her shrinking figure. “What you gonna do, Suzy? Hmm? Tell ‘im to leave, get the rest of his shit and throw it out on the lawn?” There’s a pool of saliva growing in his mouth and he pauses to swallow. “You gonna do that before or after he smacks—”

“He won’t—” she takes a sharp, shuddering breath. “He won’t come back. Chief Hopper said—”

“Chief Hopper doesn’t know _shit_ ,” Billy spits, literally, swiping spittle off his chin. “ _You_ don’t know _shit._ He’ll be back, he’ll fucking, put _you_ in your place, you think he won’t? And Max.” He laughs wetly. “I knew he’d do it.” Little tyrant that she is. Neil let her get away with a lot, enough that Billy despised her for it, because he usually ended up paying the price for her wrongdoings, but it had only been a matter of time before she tipped Neil over the edge. “He’ll do it again.”

 _And me_ , Billy thinks, _he’s gonna fuck me up for this._

Susan’s shaking her head, eyes shut in denial, “Billy, no. He won’t—”

“He _will!_ ” He screeches, the words tearing up his throat, and he coughs, his face scrunching up when pain flares across his cheek. “ _Fuck!_ ” he hisses.

“Billy…” He slams his palm on the worktop hard enough to rattle the coffee jar and toaster, and Susan flinches, backing up the inches she’d made, her hand hovering unsurely in front of her chest. So goddamn _meek_. It pisses him off. How she looks at him all pained and sympathetic, reaching out as she wants to touch him.

“Billy it… it doesn’t have to be like that,” she pauses, hesitant, “if you…” She can’t bring herself to ask, but Billy knows. ‘ _Chief Jim Hopper is here… He’ll want to speak with you at some point.’_ He hasn’t spoken to Hopper since Monday, after he snubbed him at the hospital. Susan wants him to change his mind about that, because Billy’s the one with the real gritty details, the ones that might actually get Neil a heavier sentence than the piece of paper they’re slapping him with now.

Billy’s not an idiot, he gets how this world works, it fucking unfair, and for all the years he beat Billy down and tore him open, his dad would only be sentenced, at best, to a few months behind bars. And then they’ll be back to where they are now. Waiting for the door to come crashing open. Why put it off.

 _Because a few months is all that remains until I’m a legal adult_ … and that makes all the difference. He doesn’t _need_ to graduate, doesn’t need a high school diploma to wait tables or flip burgers or what the fuck ever _pays_ enough for him to save and get out. Susan hasn’t got the balls to ask him to pay rent; he could ditch his senior year entirely and work until Neil’s time inside is done. Pack up and leave before he shows up in town. It could work—he’s thought about it a lot—but only if he bares his fucking soul open, to a _cop_ no less, and even then there’s no guarantee the outcome will change.

His hand is shaking when he raises his glass; he fumbles with the straw before he manages to get it back in his mouth, glaring at the ugly yellow patterns on the vinyl flooring. He feels prickly, his muscles twitching at random, and he tries to ignore the fact that his heavy, unstable breathing is by far the loudest sound in the room. Susan’s staring at him, her face a bleeding mesh of sympathy and concern, and he’s not looking at her but he can see her tilting towards him, her eyebrows pulled together—

“Billy?”

The patterns on the floor blur together, his visions slips out of focus, and he has to blink several times to piece it back together. His glass is empty and there’s nothing but air sucking through his straw.

Susan’s hand is on his elbow. He looks at her, and she bites her lip and asks, “are you okay?”

He’s not. But that’s not the answer either of them want so he spits out the straw and tugs his arm out of her grasp.

“I need a shower,” he mutters dismissively.

 

 

He has something of silent crises once he’s stood naked under the spray of water. Nothing too dramatic, just the kind where one moment the water is warm, and Billy closes his eyes, lathering shampoo into his oily hair, but then he opens them and the spray has run cold and his triceps are aching from holding his motionless hands above his head—soap suds swirl around his toes—there’s a banging on the bathroom door and Billy’s heart lurches into his throat.

He flattens himself against the tiles, pointlessly grabbing a fistful of the shower curtain and pulling it close, eyes trained cagily on the door like it might splinter and burst open.

_Thump, thump._

“Are you nearly done in there?”

Max.

He exhales unsteadily, his fingers peeling one by one off the curtain ‘til it flops and swishes back into place.

“Billy?”

_Thump, thump, thump._

He swallows hard, his body seized up from the cold, and barely manages to weakly croak, “y—yeah.”

“…I need to pee…?” Her voice is stifled but he hears a touch of concern all the same. He nods even though he knows she can’t see it, reaching out blindly to knock the water off. The pipes groan and Billy shivers, pulling the curtain back and stepping over the edge of the tub. The mirror hanging opposite is dripping with condensation, and he wipes his hand across it, revealing his blurry reflection.

He looks marginally better. Still too pale, too sickly and wounded appearing, but at least it isn’t oil sticking his hair to his scalp anymore. At least if his dad came barging through the door he won’t be repulsed by his hygiene; he wouldn’t put it past Neil to withhold his meds unless he looked presentable. He’s done shit like that before—reprimanded him for being in pain, or debilitated, usually from the damage _he_ caused—and Billy is deeply aware that he still has weeks of hard recovery to go and he can already hear the sneering comments about sleeping all day and eating _baby food_ ; the appalled hisses of _fairy_ and _pansy_ the moment he starts dropping weight and muscle.

Doctor Edwards told him that the numbness in his bottom lip may persist for months so he could be drooling and dribbling his food long after the wires are removed from his mouth.

He feels like his heart is sinking into his ass. His dad is going to have so many things to pick at.

“Billy…?” Max’s quiet voice carries through the door and Billy blinks, looking down to his feet and the puddle of water beneath them. He swallows and scrunches his toes up, wishes he could stop his body and brain from feeling like they were separating all the time. He grabs a towel off the rack, wraps it around his waist, and opens the door a crack, peering out like a paranoid freak.

Max raises an eyebrow at him. “I need to pee.” She repeats, giving him a curious once over and frowning.  He steps back and pulls the door open fully, kicking his dirty clothes to the corner—he’ll get them later, or Susan will, whatever—and Max backs up, giving him plenty of room to pass.

“How long were you in here for?” She ask disbelievingly, and Billy doesn’t answer her because, firstly, he doesn’t _know_ —Max was _definitely_ not at home when he climbed into the shower—and also because _fuck her_. Fuck Max and her questions and her cool and collected behaviour. He doesn’t even like looking at her for too long, reminds him too much of Saturday, squaring up to Neil like she isn’t fourteen and half his size. It guts him deeper than Billy would like to admit.

When Hopper called last night, Max was the one who answered, said hello and casually handed the phone to her mom, completely unawares to how Billy and Susan clenched up when she said _‘it’s Hopper.’_

She’s a fucking kid but he thought he taught her better than that. He kept telling her, over and over, that it’d all catch up and bite her in the ass—sneaking out of the house, hanging around with that Sinclair kid, being late home all the time—but she just kept on looking at him like _he_ was the biggest threat around even after she swung a bat between his legs.  Arms crossed and chin stuck out, pointedly ignoring all his warnings. If she didn’t want to listen, _fine,_ she would just have to learn for herself; one toe out of line on the wrong day and she’d be thankful that Billy had toughened her up.

Part of him used to look forward to the day when Neil finally lost it with her and there was a cheap thrill in seeing the truth get slapped into her skull— _welcome to the family, Maxine, you’re well and truly at home now—_ but he wasn’t prepared for his heart to plummet when she threw her fists in the air, manic battle cry tearing from her throat, thinking _no no no, you idiot, you stupid fucking—_ she was supposed to go _down_ and _stay_ down; don’t try to fight it, lie on the floor next to Billy, and _hate_.

She never fucking does what he wants her to. She’s a little bitch but when Billy remembers all the shit Neil had done to him by age fourteen there’s no rush of excitement or satisfaction in imagining him doing the same to Max. _H_ e wonders if she’ll show the same resilience when Neil’s got her hair in his fist, bouncing her head off the wall—

‘… _it’s not just about you now either…think about that…’_

Billy’s tried real hard not to think about it but today it would appear is not his fucking day.

He hears the toilet flush from the bathroom and his body moves without command; legs carrying him into the living room leaving a set of dark soggy footprints in the carpet.

Susan’s on the couch with a pile of laundry watching reruns of _Days of our Lives_ , and instead of sailing right on to his room, Billy comes to a halt behind her. She’s oblivious, her attention caught between the TV and the socks she’s pairing up; he almost envies her for it. Enjoying her little bit of peace outside of Neil’s shadow while Billy has to swallow down drugs to achieve a faint semblance of normality. Something stirs in his chest, crawling up his throat, and spills out uncontrollably in the form of words.

"I’ll talk to Hopper."

Susan jerks out of her stupor, the blouse she was in the middle of folding falling to her lap, forgotten. Her eyes are wide when they find him.

"You’ll…?"

"Talk to Hopper. Yeah." His voice sounds odd, clipped. He wants to wet his lips.

Susan’s staring at him, her mouth frozen in a little _o_. “Are you sure?” she asks uncertainly. And no, he’s _not_ sure, at all, but he’s fucked if he has to keep living day to day waiting for the door to crash open. The pain pills won’t last forever and eventually Billy’s gonna have to go _outside_ where he might bump into his dad around any corner.  It’s a confrontation he would rather never have, if he can help it. If that cop can build a case and get Neil sent down long enough for Billy to graduate, for Susan to get a divorce, for them all to move on where he can’t reach them…

“Call him,” Billy chokes out, _before I lose my fucking nerve_.

 

 

Chief Hopper arrives the following afternoon at one-thirty, half an hour earlier than expected, and Billy is still in his room, barely dressed and making a huge fuss out of what to wear. He recognises that it’s stupid, it’s not like Hopper didn’t see him doped up and half-naked a day after his surgery, but he just wants to look _okay_ , decent, without making it seem like he’s trying too hard.

He brushes his hair and uses a little product to hold his curls, scrutinizing himself in the mirror, nose wrinkling at the shadows beneath his eyes. He glances to his door. He has this powder—concealer—stashed at the back of his closet, he swiped it from some girl’s dresser after she let him sneak into her room, knew they used it to cover up their zits and shit, and after some testing  Billy discovered it works just as well on bruises. He’s knows they’re waiting for him, have been for over fifteen minutes, and Susan will be pouring them a second cups of coffee pretty soon but Billy tears open his closest and digs out the concealer anyway.

At least he won’t look like he stayed awake past 3AM working himself into a frenzied state over the thought of the impending conversation. Nobody will guess he nearly woke Susan up twice during the night to tell her to call it off.

Susan and Hopper are talking quietly on the couch when he finally emerges in a soft gray t-shirt and a pair of jeans. Casual, but not slumming it. He feels more put together, more in control, and he succeeds in keeping a straight face when Hopper looks up and catches his eyes.

This is good, _manageable_ , he can do it.

“How are you feeling?”

An obvious question, he was waiting for this one.

“Super.” He says impassively, sliding around the coffee table to where his glass and straw—which he’s definitely _not_ going to drink from with Hopper seated opposite—await him and slumping into the cushions.

“Are you sure you’re okay to talk?” And Billy swallows, a ghost of a smirk pulling at his lips.

“Ready when you are Chief.”

Hopper looks him up and down and Billy pulls himself in tight, draws circles around his elbows with the tips of his fingers. _Get on with it_.

“Okay. So.” He picks up a manila folder off the coffee table and flips it open. “I’ve already taken statements from Susan and Max about what happened last Saturday, so firstly I just need you to confirm them.”

“Alright…” Billy says, crossing his arms and Hopper squints at the file.

“So basically what I’ve got here is that your dad accused you of taking money from his wallet and after a short argument he became violent. He hit you twice, breaking your jaw the second time. Does this sound accurate?” Hopper lifts his eyes from his notes, and Billy nods. “Okay. Max came home and attempted to intervene, and he slapped her. Did you see this happen?”

“Yeah.” Billy covers his wince with another nod.

“There anything you want to add?” Billy thinks for a moment, his memories from Saturday still hazy and jumbled and most of what he recalls involves an intense pain in his face and flashes of blood oozing through his fingers; Neil might’ve shoved him a little too, poked and snarled at him until he was folding before any fists even started flying, but he’s pretty sure Hopper doesn’t need the intimate details. He shakes his head.

Hopper writes something down. “Alright. We could press ahead with just this, but if I’m honest with you I doubt it’ll hold up in court, enough for a restraining order—“

“I didn’t steal that money from him,” Billy interrupts suddenly, and he flushes when Hopper raises his eyes inquisitively. He doesn’t know why he said that, it just felt important. “I didn’t—it was my money. I didn’t take it.”

“Okay,” Hopper says slowly, the creases in his forehead drawing in tight. “It doesn’t matter if you did—”

“—I didn’t. It was mine. I didn’t take it—”

“—and I believe you, but that’s not the point,” Hopper cuts across him. “Whether you did or didn’t doesn’t change the outcome.” And that… doesn’t sound right to Billy, but Hopper’s got a serious face on and it’s not like Billy plans on revealing where the money actually came from or why it was under his bed so he drops the subject.

“As I was saying. Your dad has no previous convictions, we got a couple of noise disturbances, but otherwise his record is clean.” Unlike Billy’s. They’re off to a great start already. “Your statement and any evidence we can collect will makes a major difference though, if we can prove he’s a repeat offender and poses a continued danger then he might get sentenced to a few months, a year perhaps, depending. If he doesn’t receive jail time we’ll get a higher level restraining order at least, he breaks that and we can book him.”

Billy knows all this but it isn’t particularly comforting to hear it confirmed out loud. It might all be for nothing and Neil can do a lot of damage in the time it takes for someone to get to a phone and call in the police.

He shifts awkwardly, arms unfolding and hands coming to rest on the edge of the seat cushions. He squeezes them. “So what do you need to know?” And Hopper adjusts his position attentively, forearms on his knees, notebook in one hand, pen in the other.

“Anything you can tell me.”

It should be simple, and Billy nods like it _is_ simple, but when his lips crack open he becomes acutely aware that he has no fucking idea what to say.  Fragments of memories flash through his mind, too fast for him to grasp. Where is he supposed to start? With the worst? The most recent? Or back to the very beginning when it first started? Except. Billy can’t recall when or _how_ it really started. Violence has been a near constant part of his life for almost as long as he can remember, before him it had been his mom and he bore the full brunt of it after her passing.

Hoppers staring at him, and he’s pretty sure Susan is too but Billy’s set on ignoring her presence. When the silence stretches on for too long, Hopper drops back, relaxes his shoulders and says, “okay, I’ll ask questions and you just try to answer them as best as you can. That alright?” And Billy shrugs because it’s not really _alright_ but if he wants this over with then it needs to fucking _start_ at least.

“Alright,” Hopper says, softly but down to business, “he’s hit you before?”

“Yeah.”

“Regularly?”

“Yeah, I mean—“ he pauses because how often is regularly? Is it every day? Then, “—no, he. It was,” he grimaces at the sound of himself, his words slurred; he didn’t stutter this much when he’d practised this in his head. “It could happen a couple of times in a week, or, like, longer. If I’m not ‘round the house too much.”

Hopper manages to decipher something from that, scribbling away as he asks, “do you remember when it started?”

“Not really.” Billy swallows around the lump in his throat. “’Wasn’t always that bad—when I was younger.  He mostly just… shoved me about.”

“Shoved you about?” Hopper questions, eyes never leaving the stroke of his pen.

“Yeah, like, get up in my face and,” his hand makes a noncommittal gesture towards himself, “grab my arms, or my hair and….” He feels weird, running low on breath and not just because of the effort it takes to talk.  Hopper’s looking at him now, hands still and steady and very unlike Billy’s own which he jams under his thighs. His throat is starting to dry and the glass of water he so purposely ignored is looking more appealing by the second.

“What about like this,” Hopper points at Billy, more specifically to his face and busted jaw, “has he ever done anything to this extent before?”

He knew this part was coming, yet the question still makes him grimace, gut twisting unpleasantly. He nods. “Y-yeah. Yeah, a couple of times.”

“When was this?”

“First was—when I was thirteen—” Hopper’s eyebrow jerks up at that, a look of disbelief resting on his features. “And then, when I was fifteen.” And now seventeen.

Maybe his dad will come back when he’s nineteen to break something else.

“Thirteen?” Hopper’s still stuck on that one it seems. He rubs a hand over his beard and Billy hears him mutter _Jesus_ like he feels bad for him or something. He gives him this searching look for a second. “Alright. Can you tell me about that one? What he did… how it started…”

It _started_ because Billy had been a shit in school. A whole semester filled with detentions and calls home about his disruptive behaviour. He took a lot of smacks during those weeks but he was younger, dumber, and not quite as fearful of Neil as he should have been.

“I got,” he clears his throat. Tries again. “I got a bad report card. And he was just, yelling about it all the time.”

_“—ting around on your ass all day! You’re a lazy little—”_

Billy was stupid. Was Rude. Was ungrateful and disrespectful, among many other things according to Neil. It seemed like that was all he heard from the moment his dad stepped home from work every day. And once Christmas vacation started they were stuck in each other’s presence more than either of them could handle. He made a disastrous mistake without even knowing it.

“I was ignoring ‘im.” He’d cranked up the volume on TV to drown out Neil’s shouting _._ “And then he just lost it.”

“Lost it?” Hopper queries.

“Like. He pulled me up. By my hair— _”_ He’d been so arrogant he hadn’t taken the stomping of Neil’s boots seriously, the danger overlooked until pain seared through his scalp.  “—He punched me. Knocked me right over.”

His elbows itch—remembers how the carpet burned when he tried to scramble away—and he wants to rub them but Hopper’s eyes are boring into him and he feels vulnerable enough already. 

“What happened then?”

“ _You arrogant little fucker!”_

Billy shrugs, his shoulders jerky, and focuses on keeping his words steady. “He just kept hitting me.”

He had tried to defend himself—his fingers wrapping around his dad’s wrist, tugging on his cotton shirt—but Neil’s fists were far bigger and stronger than his and the pain quickly became too much to bear. He’d shielded his face when he tasted blood in his mouth. Curled onto his side in a ball and screamed at him to stop, screamed and cried until he became light-headed, until it suddenly stopped—

“—this go on for?”

He blinks, eyes snapping back into focus. “What?”

“How long.” Hopper repeats slowly, brow furrowing like he thinks Billy’s stupid.

“It’s not like I was fucking timing it,” Billy bites, agitated.

“Easy. It’s alright if you don’t remember.” Hopper flips his palms around in surrender. “What happened afterwards? How badly were you hurt?”

"Didn't break anything," Billy mumbles. He sniffs and gestures to his face. "My face was a mess though, bruised and shit. Couldn't go back to school for over a week."

"You weren't hospitalized though?" Hopper asks, scribbling down notes.

"No." And Billy knows that means no records. No proof, just his word which meant shit to most people. 

His dad may be unpredictable with his punishments but he usually manages to avoid messing Billy up _too_ bad because even he knows there’s only so many injuries the neighbours or his teaches can overlook before they start to feel uncomfortable. Nobody really gives a shit if Billy gets smacked around a little but broken bones spark prying questions. And Neil doesn't like questions.

"What about the second time? Fifteen you said?"

"Yeah. He, um, broke my arm."

Hopper's hand pauses and Billy fidgets when he looks up, doesn't like that stare.

"He did that?" Susan asks timidly, this real sad expression pulling at her face, the corners of her mouth drooping.

"You were together at this point?" Hopper asks her and Billy stares stubbornly at the floor. 

"I—we were dating, yes," she pauses awkwardly and he feels the anxious glances she sends his way. "Billy and I hadn't met yet. We were supposed to—Neil wanted us to all go out together but…" Yeah, use the words you want to use, Susan, _Billy fucked up._ "Billy didn't come. And. He, he told us he broke his arm at a concert, or something."

Billy drags his eyes away from the carpet and gives her a long resentful look, annoyance curling in his chest when she doesn't squirm like he hoped. She holds his gaze with watery eyes, deep with regret, so much like a _mom_ that it makes him sick.

"I take it there was no concert." Hopper says, his attention sliding back to Billy who huffs a tight laugh.

"No. Yeah. There was. A festival. I’d already told him I was going." He had his ticket long before his dad suddenly demanded Billy's presence that weekend, and with a band line-up that was better than sex there was no way in fucks chance he was missing out to just to meet his dad’s new bitch.

He knew it was dangerous, crossing his dad so brazenly, his palms sweaty as he'd snuck out of the house at the crack of dawn, diving into the back of a car waiting for him down the street, heart pounding and nervous laughter spilling from his lips as he watched his house shrinking through the rear window. None of it had mattered, not once they hit the highway, windows down, stereo blaring Priest's _Screaming for Vengeance,_ his arm slung around Jacob's shoulder as they drank their way a bunch of beers his brother had supplied for them, shouting along to the lyrics

_"Yes I'm ridin', ridin' on the winddddd!"_

It had been the best fucking day of his life.

And he paid for it. Obviously.

"So you skipped out on family dinner and he broke your arm?" Hopper simplifies, and Billy nods.

"That's the gist of it." He'd been brash, rolling up in the early hours still riding on his high, stinking of beer and pot and sweat, he felt good, _indestructible_. It wasn’t like the first time when he was fucking dumb and didn't know it was coming—he was expecting it that night, _embraced_ it even, right up until the moment Neil got up in his face, _daring_ him to try it, and he’d just seized up, nerves splintering under pressure.

It was all snatched away so quickly, all his swagger and bravado reduced to crumbs, crushed beneath his dads heel and ground into the cheap vinyl flooring where Billy had sobbed against the kitchen cabinets, body curled around his broken arm.

His eyes are stinging, fingers trembling in his lap. Hopper and Susan are quiet, both watching him carefully and patiently, like they're waiting for him to elaborate. In his own time. He doesn't want to do that. He had the opportunity to fight back and he choked. Neil slapped him for being a pussy, and then he twisted his arm until his elbow popped out, _‘and that’s for disobeying me.’_

He can’t fucking repeat that shit out loud.

Maybe it's because he can't keep his hands steady or because his eyes are getting misty and he keeps sniffing, but Hopper decides not to press him for any further details. "What did he say down at the hospital?"

"Same thing he told everyone else," Billy says, eyes darting to Susan for half a second. "I went to a concert. It got rowdy.”

He remembers how Susan, when he met her 3 weeks later with his arm in a cast, touched upon his shoulder and said _‘I'm sorry about your arm, I hear these rock shows can be wild’_ and Billy had hated her.

“Billy—I,” he squeezes his eyes shut, tries to drown out her voice. “I’m so _sorry_.”

She looks it too, Billy notes when he reopens his eyes, and that just makes it worse.

“I’ve already put in a request for your medical files, I’ll check and make sure that matches out,” Hopper continues on like a true professional and Billy is grateful he doesn’t have to watch Susan dabbing at her eyes. “Is there anything else you can think of?”

He can think of a few, Neil likes to keep their encounters on the low-down if he can help it—if Billy doesn’t piss him off too much—but he gets creative on occasion. Billy’s had a whole variety of kitchenware thrown at his head over the years. His fingers slammed in doors, hand held over the burner on the stove, wrecked clothes and tapes; Neil knows how to use his environment to his advantage, but it all seems a little anti-climactic after a broken arm and jaw. Those are the headliners, the point scorers, and Billy doubts _‘he called me names and hurt my feelings’_ is what Hopper has in mind.

“Belt.” Billy says eventually, scratching his nails against the cushions; they’ve grown long since he’s been unable to chew on them. “He used his belt a few times.” There’s a pretty badass slit in his eyebrow from where the buckle caught him last time. His dad hadn’t been pleased about the speeding ticket.

“Anything else?” Billy feels himself twitch.

“No.”

“And you’ve never physically retaliated?”

Apart from that one aborted attempt which led to a broken arm that Billy would rather not think about anymore? “No,” he growls and Hopper gives him an irked look.

“It’s just for the record,” he says. _Don’t get so defensive_ , Billy hears. Hopper must notice how his expression darkens and he cuts Billy off before he can start. “That’s all I’m gonna need from you today.” He shuts his notepad and clicks on his pen. “Believe it or not, Billy, I’m actually on your side. I know a piece of shit like your dad when I meet one.”  

He slips the notepad and pen into the file and drops it on the table without taking his eyes off Billy’s.

“He talked a lot, down at the station, said you antagonized him, you disrespected him, your step-mom, the _law_. Said he has to keep you on a short leash or else you’ll run wild.” Billy tries to keep his face neutral. He’s heard those words a hundred times before and it never ceases to surprise him with how much they sting, but he doesn’t bother to deny it; he ran out of breath for that conversation years ago.

“Yep,” Hopper drones, popping the P. “I’ve seen plenty of his kind before. Too many of them get off easily, but,” Hopper’s gaze softens in a way that has Billy frozen; feels under the lens but not threatened, like Hopper’s just trying to open up a line of communication or some shit and Billy finds himself unable to look away. “I promise I’m going to do everything I can to keep him away from you.”

He’s never been one for promises, nothing more than a set-up for disappointment, but he feels a swell of emotion he can’t stomp down, it rises in his throat, his breath hitching, eyes filling and

The fucking front door swings open and Max is yelling, “I’m home!”

Billy nearly lurches out of his seat, fingers bunching into fists and nostrils flaring as he takes deep breaths. Susan and Hopper both swivel towards her voice and he uses the opportunity to quickly scrub at his eyes, takes a few seconds in darkness to gather him together.

“Oh, shit, I…”

He pulls his hands away from his face and when he looks over he finds Max staring at him, all bug-eyed and alarmed like she’s walked in on yet another thing she’s not supposed to see.

Technically, she has.

“Oh, Maxine, honey.” Susan scrambles to her feet, “we were just. Finishing up here.” She glances back to them. Hopper nods affirmatively, his eyes sweeping from Billy to Max and then back to Billy. “Why don’t we give them a minute? How was school?”

Max is still watching him, even with her mom’s hand on her shoulder, being nudged gently from the room, and Billy dips his head, reaches for his glass when his hands become restless. He doesn’t need another set of eyes watching him try to blink back tears thank you very much; Hopper’s scrutinizing stare is unsettling enough. He feels it burning into his forehead and it makes him want to crawl out of his skin and slither across to his room.

“Now I’ve got you alone, there’s something else I feel you and I need to go over.” Hopper says once they hear Susan and Max move to the back of the house, leaning forward, elbows on his thighs and fingers lacing together thoughtfully, and Billy narrows his eyes with suspicion, not liking where this might go. “You probably know Susan doesn’t legally have any parental rights over you, but since you’ll be eighteen in six months anyway we don’t see much point in involving CPS. You’ll be staying here until then. As long as _everybody_ is happy with that.” 

And Billy thinks he might know where this is heading now but he plays dumb; wants to hear Hopper’s choice of words with his own ears. He runs his tongue along the backs of his teeth. “You wanna be a bit more enlightening here, chief?” he says testily.

Hopper’s poking his cheek with his tongue, slowly gaging Billy with a sternness that was absent only minutes ago. “Things will be different without your dad around; you’re going to need to adjust to that. Susan is the adult in charge and you’re still a minor living under her roof so…” Billy assumes these pauses are for dramatic effect but really they’re just starting to piss him off a little. “You’ll need to respect her as such, otherwise we’ll have to look at alternate arrangements…”

“Is this a threat?” Billy spits, a blockage swelling in his throat and his voice wavers. “’Telling me I better be a good boy or else it’s the system for me?” _Now that my old man isn’t here to keep me in line_. His knee bounces and he nods down the hall, “—this her doing?”

“No. And no. In fact your step-mom has been very adamant about having you here. But she’s also got a lot on her plate right now, and _you,”_ his index fingers come together in a triangle to point at him, “you’ve been here, what, six, seven months? And you’ve built quite the reputation for yourself. I know my colleagues have picked you up more than once. Speeding. Drunk and disorderly. She’s not like your dad. Keep up that behaviour and you’ll run her into the ground.”

Billy swallows but the lump doesn’t budge. “ _Get_ to the point.” There’s venom in his voice, cracked as it may be, and his knee jiggles faster. Hopper doesn’t so much as blink, he checks over his shoulder before shifting to the edge of his seat, shins nudging the coffee table, and leans even closer.

“You need to think long and hard about your attitude,” he says in low voice, his brow pulled tight over his eyes. “Your dad’s a piece of shit but that doesn’t mean you get a free pass to be one too. _Don’t_ —“ Billy makes a noise of protest, nostrils flaring angrily, “I know how you’ve treated Max. How you treated Lucas Sinclair and Steve Harrington too—“

“—you don’t—“

“—Yes, I _do.”_ Hopper cuts over him easily, leaves him frothing on his saliva and snarling under his breath. “And honestly, I’m noticing some _striking_ similarities.”

He nods at Billy knowingly and Billy makes a noise of disbelief, his brain hard on the brakes and coming screeching to a halt.

“Are you _insinuate—“_

“Yes.” Hopper says, just like fucking _that_ , and Billy gapes, somewhere between offended and infuriated. Scorned and incredulous. Hopper’s entirely straight-faced; no hint of a lie or joke, and Billy’s still trying to find the right fucking words to properly express his outrage when Max’s annoying voice floats out from her room, and he freezes, lips cementing together. She’s bitching about school, about homework, normal everyday shit. He hears Sinclair’s name, and Dusty—who he thinks is the curly haired one with the cap but he’s not sure—and Billy’s heart is beating way too fucking fast, an undercurrent of anguish rippling beneath his skin, breath catching in his chest.

Sometimes, before he cries, Billy knows his bottom lip starts to tremble, real fucking wobbly and pathetic like in the cartoons, and he can’t feel shit but he thinks that might be happening right now because Hopper’s face softens again, like he’s trying to carefully moderate the switch between good cop and bad cop. A touch of compassion creeps back into his eyes and he sighs wearily.

“Listen, you didn’t deserve what your dad did to you, and I’m sorry that you had to go through all that, really I am,” he jerks his head towards the sound of Max’s voice, “but _she_ doesn’t deserve it either.”

And this time Billy truly has nothing to respond with. His mouth twitches uselessly and he simply watches Hopper stand when Susan and Max re-enter, tucking the file under his arm, and spinning his hat around in his hand.

“I’m heading back to the station,” he tells Susan, his thumb hooking through the loop of his belt. “I’ll be in touch with any updates. Any problems and you have my number.” He turns back to Billy. “Call me if you remember anything else, okay?”

Billy nods, back rigid and immensely uncomfortable at how Hopper dials down his tone to something that almost sounds friendly right after… _that_. There are three pairs of eyes on him and he feels the weight of them all individually, the pause, the suspense while Hopper sits his hat atop his head; they share this long, meaningful look that kind of makes Billy wants to sink right through the couch and then the floor too.

“You focus on getting better.”

And with that Susan sees him out. Follows him actually, out onto the porch and shuts the door before her. Talking about him no doubt. He swallows painfully.

Max flops down onto the sofa. “You okay?” she asks, using the remote to flick on the TV, and side-eyeing him through strands of her hair.

“Fine,” he growls with more bite than intended, and it’s minuet, but he notices how her chin tilts away, shoulders hunching defensively, and she mutters, “alright…”—a single word and the barriers are up.

It’s not unusual. He’s witnessed it all before of course but not quite like this, like he can visibly see her muscles bunching, her eyes narrowing at the screen even as her ears perk in his direction. He stares long and hard, really _looking_ , and he knows she can feel it, and if the red hue that begins to stain her cheeks was her only reaction then he might have just snorted and filed Hopper’s _concerns_ away onto some dusty shelf at the back of his mind, but that option dies a quick death because his eyes focus on how her toes curl and the way her limbs tense and tighten, body coiling on instinct, and he’s struck painfully in the gut when he considers the possibility that this might be part of what he taught her.

He looks away, drums his fingers on his knee impatiently and counts to ten before he looks back and… she’s _still_ wound up tight, pretending to watch the TV and shooting him cautious glances and no, Billy is fucking _not_ sitting here while she pretends she a fucking hostage or whatever…

Susan slips back inside just as Billy climbs to his feet and she scuttles after him, wringing her hands together and he knows she’s got one of her appalling pep-talks brewing and he _really_ isn’t in the fucking mood for it. 

He’s had enough of feeling for one day.

He goes straight for the paper bag that holds his pain meds.

“Billy, you need to eat first.”

“I’m not hungry,” he grunts, slaps the pills on the counter and reaches for a glass.

“Billy…” Susan touches his forearm and he looks at her hand, then to her face as if to say _what the fuck are you doing_. He feels her fingers press lightly into his skin. “You’ll be ill if you take them on an empty stomach…” She says it quiet, inoffensively, but Billy sees how her throat works—trying to swallow down her apprehension—sees it all her eyes when they shift edgily. She’s actually scared of him. Or she’s scared of these _similarities_ that Hopper insists are there.           

He bares his teeth, wires and all, and tears his arm out of her grip, stalking past her to the fridge and taking the first flash he sees, some brown sludgy shit she’s prepped for him. He doesn’t care. She flinches when he slams the fridge shut harder than necessary and he bristles. _Adult of the house._ She’s such a fucking joke.

He goes to his room, fills the syringe three times and then tips the rest of it into his waste bin.

 

 

 _They’re not fucking working,_ is what Billy thinks two hours later.

He’s been waiting for the fog to settle, for his thoughts to splutter and fade out with a final gasp, but they just keep on ticking over, one after the other, first the inescapable anxiety surrounding his dad— _boy_ , is he gonna fucking _hate_ Billy for tattling on him to the cops, _‘can’t fight your own battles, Billy? Need more than Susan’s skirt to hide behind?’—_ which quickly weaves itself into a smothering blanket of self-loathing; his brain helpfully compiling an unwelcome album of his most impressive failings, his top ten hits, including everybody’s favourites _Billy ruins Thanksgiving by sighing too loudly_ and _Billy almost loses his cock to a little girl with a bat._ And special bonus track: _Billy gets saved by the same little girl._

Fucking Max. Shitty little hellion. She hates him, stuck a needle in his neck and stole his car, wants him _gone_ as much as he wants to go, and yet she put herself between him and Neil. Took a slap for it too.

Billy never slapped her.

Not once, not even when he was wound up tight and she was pushing every one of the wrong buttons; he showed some god-sent fucking restraint when it came to her, the kind Neil had never bestowed upon him. He grabbed her arm _one_ time, _might’ve_ squeezed a touch too tight, threatened her a little and sneered at her tears afterwards. So fucking what. Neil chewed him out _all night_ after she sneaked out of the house just after Halloween. He had to pay for a paint job for the scratches _she_ put on his car out of his own pocket, and it felt _good_ kicking her new skateboard out from under her feet, watching her slam onto the concrete, elbows torn opens and bloody. She’d cried then too but that time she made no attempt to hide it. She cried all angry and ugly, screamed ‘ _ASSHOLE’_ at him as she’d stormed into the house and locked herself in her room.

She learned her lesson though. Susan asked her what happened to her elbows at dinner and Max shifted her eyes, mumbled something about falling off her board and Neil told her she shouldn’t be skating when it’s icy out. That had given Billy a real power trip. She thought she was holding his balls hostage, but there was no fucking way he was gonna let her make a mockery out of him, _give an inch and she’ll take a mile_ , if she makes him wait too long outside the arcade then the next time she needs a ride to the movie theatre he makes sure to take the long way around town, _twice_ , nice and slow with the locks down so she misses the first ten minutes. That’s their game and he’s only playing by the rules; she wanders too far out of bounds and he reins her in. Keep her on a short leash o _r else you’ll run wild—_

His inner voice morphs into another and Billy flinches. He’s not the one who said that. Hopper did. Earlier that day.

Those were his dad’s words. About _him_.

He goes cold, the air knocked out of him like he just got punched in the gut.

 _No_. He shakes his head. No fucking way is it on the same level. A snared wrist _doesn’t_ match a broken arm. Fuck Hopper. Fuck Max. He’d be fucking _laughing_ if the worst he got was grazed elbows. It’s not the same, he might get pissed with her, but he never. He doesn’t… he doesn’t do what Neil does to him.

Not even close.

His hands are trembling, twisted up in his sheets, like he needs to do something with them. He tries to think, _think,_ what he would normally do, how he fills that pit in his stomach when the pull gets too strong. All of the usual remedies are off limits; can’t really get a cigarette in his mouth like this, alcohol fucks with his antibiotics, and his music is nothing more than the source of a headache. Even if he had the energy he’s been strictly forbidden from going anywhere near his weight bench for at least _six weeks_ , and he chokes on a sob, feeling the full weight of helplessness begin to settle over him knowing everything he relishes in has been snatched away for something he didn’t even fucking _do._

_Fucking shit. Fuck!_

He pounds his fists into his mattress and makes the mistake of rolling aggressively onto his other side, and he fucking _whimpers_ at the pain that sparks in his jaw.

He screws his eyes shut, his body coiled tight and air rattling through his lungs, and his chest seems to cave in on itself. There’s a wet, stuffy sound coming from his nose and the backs of his eyes burn and he feels himself slipping; that deep, gaping cavity awaits him…

He pushes himself abruptly to his feet and stalks to the door with meaningful strides. Susan and Max are curled up together on the couch, watching TV under dim lights, they both look up when he steps out of his room and he chooses not to acknowledge them, following his feet to the kitchen with one purpose in mind.

He fills a glass of water and pockets two of his pain pills.

 

 

It feels like his eyes are only shut for a second but his room is almost pitch black when he shoots up, and a whole fucking palette of vibrant colours bursts in the dark. An array of squiggles, splotches, and spirals dance across his vision, blinking brighter and brighter until they fizzle to white and another resumes its place.

The floor feels like its tilting, his bed and furniture along for the ride, the walls beginning to rotate; his stomach clenches up and he thinks he’s gonna puke. He moves slowly, tries to maintain deep, steady breaths, but the moment he’s upright with his feet on the floor his stomach convulses again and this time his feels something wet and acidic lick its way up his throat, lapping the back of his tongue, _rotten_ , and Billy’s up, lurching towards his door and wrenching it open with far less poise this time.

There’s a lamp still on in the living room and it’s only thanks to that that Billy manages to stagger across without crashing into anything. He swings himself into the hall, hands slamming into the walls when dizziness overtakes him, legs loosing coordination by the second, and he can feel vomit pooling under his tongue. The bathroom door opens right as he reaches for the handle, and he sees Max’s alarmed expression for half a second before he barrels through her, _hard_ , checking her with hip and elbow, absent caring to her startled yelp or the _thud_ that came with her falling against the tub—he’s already dropping to his knees and scrambling to drag himself over the toilet…

He retches—a deep, sodden gurgle erupting from his throat—and panic descends over him when his mouth fills with sick, watery and sour, too quickly for him to squirt it out between his gums. He clutches at the bowl uselessly, tears clinging to his lashes as he forces his muscles to move—gagging on an agonized groan—the rancid contents of his stomach squelching, seeping through his gums as he hacks and spits, spraying all over bowl and his chin.

“Billy!”

Susan’s stricken voice reaches him over the retching, reminding him he has an audience, and he whines like a gutted pig.

“Oh no! His wires! He can choke!”

He’s not fucking choking, _dumb bitch._ He’s making a real fucking mess for sure but it’s… it’s coming out, along with the ugliest sounds he’s ever made. Breathing is a chore, his nose stuffy and dripping, so he gasps wetly, sucking in air between puking, riding out the convulsions with a heaving chest.

He feels someone pat him on the back, a few cautious taps, and Billy swipes at them blindly, hitting only air but he gets his message across nonetheless. Does he look like he wants to be touched right now? His shoulders hunch up, stomach convulsing weakly, watery vomit drips from his lips. He cradles his head with his hands, wipes his sweat-soaked hair from his forehead, and rocks himself back and forth until _finally_ the heaving slows and he shivers, his forearms erupting with goose pimples.

Using what little strength he has he pushes himself away from the bowl and slumps boneless against the tub. His head’s pounding, the lights spin above him and he heaves in air through his nose, begs his eyes to focus and for the room to stop rotating. The sour stench of bile slowly invades his airways and his stomach lurches again, lighter but sudden; saliva spills down his chin. He groans pathetically.

His shirt is wet at the collar and his chest glistening by the time the rooms rights itself, the fuzziness slowly lifting and Billy almost flinches when he focuses on the two figures in front of him.

Fucking deja-vu.

Max and Susan stand over him wearing equally horrified expressions, and it takes a moment for Billy to remember he’s in the bathroom not his bedroom and this isn’t blood spilled down his chin but vomit. His dad is nowhere to be seen and yet he’s still on the floor, covered in in his own body fluids, with his step-mom and step-sister to bear witness to the embarrassing spectacle. He feels like he might hurl again.

Instead he starts to laugh.

It bubbles up uncontrollably and Max clutches the towel she’s holding to her chest, and Susan covers her mouth with her hand—the wire cutters hanging uselessly from the other—and he’s got to wonder if this was what they expected the eruption to look like, or was it like Hopper hinted at, and they were bracing for his fury and tunnel vision. Doesn’t fucking matter now, they look fucking _lost_ , the pair of them, and isn’t that just hysterical—they can take down Neil but still Billy somehow remains their biggest fucking conundrum. His giggles send shudders wracking through him, right down in his bones like his skeleton might rattle its way free of his body, and his vision swims; the faces and the walls all warping together as one.

He vividly remembers when he was thirteen, Christmas day, two days after the beating—the bad one, the one he told Hopper about—and his dad, making a sudden reappearance, sat him on the edge of his bed, crouched down in front of him so they were eye-level and took in every bruise, every swell and welt, that marred Billy’s exposed flesh. _‘You need to do better, Billy.’_ And Billy cried and apologised and sank into his father’s arms like he was his saviour because he didn’t know what the fuck else to do and _please, please, don’t be mad at me…_

His laughter turns desperate, choked, his face crumples and his cheeks feel damp; someone is shushing him, soft touches on his shoulder, his forehead…

His last coherent thought is how difficult it’s gonna be to pretend this didn’t happen in the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, I'm late, writing is hard!
> 
> If you didn't catch it in the tags I'd just like to remind everyone that this is a s l o w burn.
> 
> Tumblr @cherry-toxic
> 
> (Title taken from Hatebreed's Before the Fight Ends You)


	5. max - part two

Max likes Mr. Clark. He’s clever and engaging in a way that none of her teachers back in San Diego had been, eager to educate and probably a touch _too_ supportive of all the weird projects Dustin likes to come up with, but honestly—who the hell gives out _this_ much homework _this_ close to summer vacation?

It’s supposed to be winding-down time and yet she left school yesterday with a monumental scowl on her face and her bag stuffed with an illegal amount of homework.

Half of it is math.

She _hates_ math.

It takes an ungodly amount of willpower not to simply dump her workbook in the garbage (what’s the worst that could happen? Detention and a long disappointed look from Mr Clarke, _scary_ ) but since the weekend has already kicked off with a terrible start thanks to Billy’s epic meltdown last night, Max figures the least she can do  is not add to her mom’s stresses.

And, if she can get _most_ of it done by the time her mom comes back from the grocery store then she might be able to sweet-talk a few extra quarters for the arcade out of her. 

Two birds with one stone. Max can get out of the house for the rest of the day and her mom doesn’t have to deal with the standard Sunday evening panic when she finds out Max has left all her homework to the last minute. 

She’s just gotta make her brain _focus_ and power through this disgusting list of math problems. She's even separated herself from distractions, taking her books and stationary to the dinner table away from the tv and her radio and comics; head down and she can have this done in an hour. Easy-peasy. 

Supposedly.

She purses her lips, irritably flicks her hair away from her face and winces when a sharp ache flares up in her shoulder—stilling with her tongue pinched between her teeth.

She hit her arm on the bathtub, last night, after Billy nearly trampled straight through her on his mission to the toilet—sent her sprawling and she landed painfully and awkwardly over the edge of the tub, and now there's a big ugly bruise blossoming on the back of her arm just above her elbow that she keeps twisting her skin around to get a good look at. It doesn't actually hurt when she pokes at it but her shoulder feels like someone tried to wrench it from her body.

She rotates it slowly, her head tilting to the side to peer around the door through to the lounge. There hasn't been any signs of life coming from Billy’s room since her mom checked on him right before she left, and while Max figures it's likely he's going to be comatose for a while yet, she keeps listening for movement, concern nibbling away at her concentration like she’s nibbled her nails down to stubs.

For the record, she’s no closer to figuring how she stands with Billy or if their relationship will be different now—hasn’t even breached the subject with him. Or anything subject, really.

The first couple of days she told herself Billy was too tired—can't expect to have a productive conversation with someone who spends their day either asleep or drooling at the tv—and then after he started to perk up and move around, he just looked so… _defeated_ , and Max knows from experience that some wounds need a little time to heal before they’re ready to be discussed. Neil had only been gone for a few days. She figured she could wait a week, or two,  for some colour to return to his cheeks, for a little fight in his eyes, and then maybe she wouldn’t feel so guilty for prodding him at such a low point.

But then the meltdown on the bathroom floor happened and that was… well. _Unexpected_ , and sort of unbearable.

She knew it was coming, in one form or another, because _“Billy may be ‘emotional’ while he’s recovering,_ ” as her mom had informed ( _warned_ ) her several times—and Max had worked real hard not to roll her eyes, because, yeah _no shit_ , Billy is generally rather touchy even on his better days and there’s no way he was gonna see this through without at least one emotional outburst—but she just... hadn’t anticipated it happening quite so _soon_ , and she thought there would be more arguing and a couple of dents in the drywall and maybe another noise-complaint from the neighbours.

More like _Billy._ Highschool bully and her dickhead step-brother. Awful but familiar.

She has no experience with the person who sat sobbing against the bathtub while her mom delicately wiped vomit off of his chin and neck and chest with a damp face cloth, and that’s just _fantastic_ because now she has another version of Billy she has to learn to navigate and pacify.

It reassures her, a little, knowing that there definitely is a heart folded and buried somewhere amongst Billy’s hot-blooded veins and a sharkskin exterior, but not enough for her to feel comfortable dropping her shield or shedding her armor just yet. Approaching Billy sometimes feels too much like going into battle. And a week ago she might have reasoned that it was easier that way—to fight him rather than try to understand him. But then Neil slapped her. He slapped her and pushed her mom and beat on Billy and she won’t ever forget that sensation of unbridled _rage_ surging within her chest, red mist overcoming her vision, like that night back in November, when she screamed _“SAY IT!”_ at Billy and brought a nail-bat down between his legs. She’s not going to lie, it feels _powerful_ in the moment, like she’s seven feet tall—a real one-woman army—but it’s frightening too, knowing she _gave in_ to her anger, even if it was justified, because she swore she never wanted to do that, to be _like Billy_.

Lucas once said _‘you’re nothing like your brother_ _’_ and she’s worked real hard on making sure that statement stays true, but these past few days have had her wondering if she’d be the same person now if she hadn’t agreed to sneak out of the house that afternoon with him. Would he still be her boyfriend if they hadn’t bonded on top of that bus in the junkyard? Would she have _any friends_ at all if Billy kept hounding them?

Because Billy doesn’t have friends. Not _really_ anyway. He has _followers_. Girls who want to sleep with him or guys like Tommy—the meathead who intercepted her outside of school on Wednesday—who thrive off Billy’s chaotic energy so long as they’re not in his targeting range; none of them ever stick around for very long, either he ditches them or they back away willingly after he does something a little _too_ psycho. And like, Max doesn’t have a great deal of sympathy for him, self-inflicted really, but it’s kind of sad that even with the rumors circulating no one has actually come by to check-in on Billy. Not even a phone-call.

She doesn’t want to think about how miserable and _angry_ she’d be now if she didn’t have the gang at her back. And she shouldn’t start thinking about how lonely Billy must feel without that support, because _shit_ now she’s going to start imagining a world where Billy lets _her_ be his support, where Neil disappears for good and takes all the poison seeped in the walls with him and Billy doesn’t need to be angry or afraid anymore.

She smiles a little, recalling distant memories of Billy singing out of tune to Iron Maiden in the Camaro and treating her to ice-cream down by the pier with his own cash; the way he would smirk at her tongue pinched between her teeth at the arcade, laughing and ruffling her hair when she swore along with Q*bert as she ran into another snake. How he said _“not bad, Mad Max. Have another go,”_ and flipped a quarter at her.

Max shakes her head, disturbing her daydreams before they go any further. It’s risky letting her mind wander down that path without it ending in disappointment and humiliation.

It’s a half hour after her mom left and she’s barely a third of the way down the problems in her textbook when she hears a creak from the floorboards across the house and she stills, the figures she was in the middle of calculating slipping clear from mind, and she’s ducking her head around the doorway again, weight tipping her chair on two legs and she uses the table to steady herself; silently scrutinizing the door to Billy’s room.

Nothing.

Her chair slams back down onto all four legs, dragging coarsely against the floor as she pushes herself to her feet with a frustrated sigh, looking around the kitchen a little lost and unsure as to _why_ she stood up, so she goes to the fridge and opens it, because that’s what you do when you’re bored or restless—stare at food and hope it gives you some answers. Except the shelves in their fridge are stacked and lined with tupperware and soup flasks containing various brands of home-made baby-smush. She crinkles her nose, nudging them aside distastefully and grabs a pack of cheap processed ham, inspecting the contents and determining there’s enough for a sandwich that she isn’t really hungry for.

She spends a couple of minutes picking spots of green mold off the bread, throws a few unsalvageable slices in the trash, and pours herself a glass of orange soda that nearly ends up all over the worktop when something crashes and the house rumbles under vibrations.

Seems like he’s awake.

Its faint, muffled through the walls, but she can hear him stumbling around in his room, disoriented and weak-kneed like how he is the morning after a wild party. He'll most likely be in a foul-mood. And he’ll be wanting water. Which puts Max in his warpath. She briefly considers retreating to her room, sit out the worst of his hangover and wait until he’s at least hydrated, but she’s also _curious_ , and stubborn as her mom would say, and has made far more irrational decisions than this which all turned out _fine_ in the end, so

She takes her dry sandwich to the table and waits expectantly.

She counts to six, eyes on her workbook but not really absorbing anything, and Billy's bedroom door opens. She tracks his movements across the house from the drag of his hands over the walls he uses to stay balanced, the floorboard near the mantle that groans heartily under his feet, the slap of bare skin on vinyl as he reaches the kitchen.

“‘Morning.” She chances, giving him a quick once over. His hair is a wreck and he blinks at her with one bleary eye, the meat of his palm buried in the other, and the corners of his mouth tilt downwards as if he just swallowed something particularly unpleasant. 

Her mom managed to strip him out of his sweat and vomit soaked muscle vest before she put him to bed, and he’s replaced it with a black one that hangs a little too loose and really highlights the lack of colour to his skin.

She isn’t surprised when he passes by her wordlessly, going straight for the bag he brought back from the hospital, and she hears paper rustling, his hand digging around inside, first quietly, and then fevourantly when he struggles to find what he’s after, and Max knows his stronger painkillers are currently sitting pretty in her mom’s purse because last night proved Billy couldn’t be trusted to regulate his own dosage…

The bag tears, contents spilling out, and Billy swears, guttural, terse; she takes a bite from her sandwich, points her eyes directly at her homework and tries to ignore him as he begins rummaging through the cupboards and drawers with mounting irritation. She’s sure the answer she’s got to the last question isn’t right but she scribbles it in anyway, wiping a few stray crumbs from her paper and goes straight to the next one. She flinches when Billy aggressively slams a drawer shut, biting her inner cheek and cautiously peering through the locks of her hair as he grumbles under his breath and swipes his sweat-matted curls away from his face.

“If you’re looking for your pain meds, my mom took them with her.”

He halts, pivots on his heels to face her. “Wh _at?”_

Max already regrets opening her mouth, but she made her decision, she’s sticking with it. “She took them with her to the grocery—“

“Yes, I fucking heard you the first time,” he snarls weakly, throat bubbling with too much spit and he winces as he swallows, “why in the fuck would she take them with her?”

“Oh, I dunno, let’s think,” Max says feigning puzzlement, staring up at the ceiling thoughtfully and tapping her pencil against her lip. “Maybe because you took more than you were supposed to—“

“—oh my _god_ —“

“—and ended up barfing everywhere,” she continues like he didn’t say anything, “like, you know you could have _choked_ right?” He rolls his eyes and scoffs. “It’s not _funny_ Billy! You scared the shit out of her!” _And me_. 

“Are you _serious?_   I fucking—” his voice is wet and sticky sounding and he keeps pausing to swallow. “I _need_ those, you shit-stick, I—”

“I’m. Just. _Tel-ling._ You.” She enunciates slowly and precisely. “And besides don’t you need to _eat_ beforehand anyway? Why don’t you do that now?” She suggests, checking the clock on the wall. “She’ll be back in like, twenty-minutes, she’ll probably just _give_ them to you if you don’t throw your…” she gestures ambiguously at the fridge “... _shake-thingy_ in the trash this time.”

“Why don’t you tr-try eating that...that,” he pauses, swallows, clears his throat, and still manages to sound like he’s speaking through a soupy web of phlegm, “tastes like fucking sew-sewage, and— _”_ he makes a gross sound, sucking the spittle out of his gums. “Jesus _fuck!”_ He grimaces, and everything he threw up last night is probably stuck to his tongue but Max watches him rather unsympathetically as he storms over to the sink, fills a glass of water and sucks greedily at it through a straw.

And okay, maybe a touch of sympathy creeps back into her peripheral, smoothes out the creases in her forehead, and she doesn’t want to fight him, or enlarge the headache clearly pulsing between his eyes.

“I meant it, you know,” she tries, calmer, less accusatory, “my mom will give you your meds as long as you eat something. She just doesn’t want you to puke again.” 

“Shut up,” he croaks weakly, and she does, not because he told her to but because it’s just meaningless to do otherwise. That’s the thing with Billy, everything is on _his_ terms or not at all. And it appears he’s opted to be uncooperative today so what’s the point?

He fills his glass again, sips at it slower this time, steadying himself with one hand on the worktop and Max can see the tremble in his fingers, the sickly, washed out sheen to his skin, dull eyes lost aimlessly out the window. She thinks he’ll probably go lie back down, as standing seems like a pretty difficult task for him right now, but once he empties his glass the second time, he passes behind her and the fridge opens and Max actually blinks in surprise, halting her breath while he shuffles through the flasks lined on the shelves, and when she chances a fleeting glance over her shoulder he's closing the fridge with one in his hand.

Huh. Maybe not so uncooperative then.

That's a pleasant change, she supposes.

Her eyes fall back to her homework, the soft _tick-tick_ from the clock punctuating the silence and she scratches in another half-assed guess. She can sense him lingering somewhere behind her, feel the burn of his gaze on the back of her head and she tries not to track him too obviously as he slowly circles the table, pulling back the chair opposite her and slumping lazily into it.

She raises her eyes discreetly, sees the flask containing some grayish muck and that feeding syringe he uses resting between his palms on the table, and she frowns because he’s not gonna... _eat_ in front of her is he? He’s made it quite clear he likes his privacy for that. Her vision creeps up his creased top to his neck and the swell around his jaw, and he… he’s just watching her, a strange expression resting on his face.

She immediately looks down, heat flushing to her cheeks, and her grip on her pencil tightens.

 _Coward_ , she thinks. He’s not that scary, _nowhere near as scary as Neil._ She still tenses at the wet smack of his lips parting—braces for something cold. Something mean.

“I’m sorry.”

Her head snaps up abruptly, certain she just misheard.

“...What?”

His gaze flickers off to the side, and she counts his finger double-tapping on his flask, one, two, three, four times, before his shoulders lift a fraction and he brings his eyes back to hers. “I’m sorry.”

She stares. He doesn’t say anything else. 

Both his eyes and expression are rather blank, devoid of any emotion that Max can recognises, his fingers continue to drum impatiently, like he’s waiting on her acknowledgement. She feels a little numb, like she’s stuck on a loading screen while her brain tries to reboot, and she makes a few useless shapes with her mouth before she remembers how to generate sound.

“You’re sorry?” She repeats slowly.

“Yeah.”

_Yeah._

It comes out _bored_ —trivialising almost—and her eyes narrow.

She taps her pencil against her textbook. “What exactly are you sorry for?” She asks, waiting several seconds for an answer and huffs a tight humourless laugh when all she receives is a puzzled look. Of course. _He doesn’t even know_. “Are you sorry for... shoving me last night? Orrrr... for yelling at me? Or grabbing me—”  

“ _Jesus_ ,” Billy groans dramatically and slumps into his chair; shaking his head incredulously like he’s witnessing a child on the verge of a tantrum, like she’s _overreacting_. A deep-rooted anger flares beneath her skin and she trembles from the effort required to contain it. 

“Are you sorry for breaking my skateboard too?” She shoots for composed but a touch of hysteria creeps unwelcomely into her voice regardless. “Or the picture frame my dad gave me? Or—” 

“Right, _okay—_ “

“—or MAYBE you’re sorry for threatening to kill my friends?” 

“Oh my god, Maxine,” he drawls, eyes rolling all around his head, “you’re being dramatic—“

And that’s the tilting point for her, when all her restraint and sensible thought tips its hat in farewell and makes a swift exit and she _can’t fucking listen_ to this. She _won’t_. In a split second she tears her textbook off the table and _throws_ it at him, and he barely manages to whack it away before it hits him squarely in the face, which in retrospect is _lucky_ , considering the whole broken jaw, but she’s not thinking about that right now. 

“ _What the fu—“_

“ _I’M_ BEING DRAMATIC?” She screeches. “ME?”

“Yeah, _you_ —“

“Do you eVER EVEN _LISTEN_ TO YOURSELF BILLY?” Her chest puffs up as she inhales and her voice easily slices right through his.  “You’re the most dramatic person I know and I’m in _middle school!”_  

“I—”

“You make a fight out of _everything_ ,” she pushes on even as Billy whines _‘you’re the one who’s starting a fight!’_ and it’s _so_ _easy_ to talk over him with his jaw wired. “I feel like every time I talk to you I’m _mentally_ plotting all my escape routes because _I don’t know_ what’s gonna send you berserk and you do stupid shit like drink too much and _overdose_ on your meds,” she ticks them off on her fingers, “and you intimidate people because it makes you feel tough or whatever when really you just look _crazy_ to _—!”_

There’s a brutal _wham_ from the table as Billy’s knee collides with the underside so violently it _lifts_ off the floor, rattling the salt and pepper shakers in the center and overturning his flask and also Max’s barely touched glass, and she _shrieks—”BILLY!”—_ jumping to her feet as a fizzing wave of soda floods across the tabletop and soaks through her homework paper before she can get her hands on it. She stares at in horror, sodden and dripping, her pencil scratches blurring beneath a tide of orange dye and she’s going to have to start _all over again._

"YOU ALWAYS DO THIS!" She screams, hating herself when her voice wobbles and tears of frustration burn in her eyes. She crushes the paper into a soggy ball and throws it at him, stamping her feet when its bounces ineffectively off his forearm again and wishing she had a brick instead.

“You’re the one who’s yelling and throwing things, _Maxine,”_ he hisses unkindly, swiping away a few spots of moisture that landed on his cheeks. “I was _apologising_ you ungrateful shit.”

 _Ungrateful._ She makes a face of disbelief, torn between wanting to laugh and cry.

“And you think that one little _sorry_ makes everything okay?” Her voice is going all high and wobbly and she clenches her jaw, determined not to give him any more of her tears. “Are you even sorry at all?”

“I—” His face pinches, like the words are sour on his tongue and his eyes shift restlessly, swallowing painfully before he grinds out, “ _yes,_ I’m _sorry_ ,” like he’s _really_ forcing it and Max can’t figure out why he makes it sound so _difficult_.

Just. 

Fucking _men_! And their stupid masculine pride.

She pushes away from the table, sniffing quietly as she retrieves some paper towels from the side and uses them to mop up the spillage.

A voice in her head tells her she shouldn’t push it any further, to just _accept_ this half-assed apology for what is because it’s not like she’s ever had a better one before (the ones Neil made him say don’t count) but she… sometimes she used to imagine how it would go, if he _were_ to say sorry, and it’s not like she pictured tears or a long remorseful confession—it’s still _Billy_ —and she _knew_ it was stupid anyway but… she just thought there’d be at least a little _more_ to it. More honest, more willing. More _specific_.

Instead of what felt like a broad and thoughtless _‘sorry I’m a dick, am I forgiven?’_

Her chest pulls painfully, and she doesn’t understand how she can feel so let down when the bar was set so low.

She glares down at the floor bitterly. “You were such an asshole when we moved here.”

“Yeah well you were no angel either,” he mutters, arms crossed.

“Don’t,” she says sharply, dumping the soggy towels and her ruined homework in the trash. “Don’t pretend I’m like you,” and her voice quivers as she adds, “or your dad.”

And she’s not surprised when Billy bristles, his arms slowly unfolding and his fists coming to rest on the edge of the table, knuckles white, his eyes cold and face hard as stone. And she’s sure, for a moment, that he’s gonna flip the whole thing over, and that she’s gonna be backed up against the cupboards with him towering over her ready to make her regret daring to speak to him like that.

“I’m _not_ like him,” his hisses in a voice so low and vehement it makes her skin crawl. There’s a glacial glint to his eyes, sharp and jagged like craggy icicles snaking over frosted glass, and she represses the urge to shiver.

“Maybe...” she says hesitantly, feels the reverberations of her galloping heart between her ears and her voice lowers a fraction “...not yet at least anyway.”

And she realises that sounds harsh, to compare him to the man who slapped him and broke his jaw and probably did so much more than Max will never know about, but she _watched_ Billy pin Steve to ground, hit him ‘til he was unconscious and still showed no signs of stopping until she intervened, and she needs Billy to _get_ that.

“You could have _killed_ Steve.”

He looks stunned for a second as if wondering why she would bring Steve up, what her _angle_ is, and then his eyes narrow, suspicion crossing his gaze, but he’s not interrupting her, not yet. Max swallows, chooses her next words cautiously.

“You get angry and... you take it out on other people. You take it out on _me_.”

“YOU SNEAKED OUT!” Billy explodes again, his face screwing up in frustration and Max lets out an exasperated sigh which he snarls at. “You _ran off_ and Harrington _lied_ to me about where. you. _were_. For all I know he was _fiddling_ with you in that house.”

“What the fuck Billy! That’s bullshit and you know it,” she snaps and takes a step forward, pointing a finger at him accusingly, “you were already out looking for blood—”

“Because you _ran off!_ ” He seethes, bubbles of spit popping around his lips and she doesn’t jump this time when the table rattles under his fist; it’s getting too predictable. “Do you know how much trouble I got in because of that?”

“Then what about all the other times?” Max yells, effortlessly drowning out Billy’s voice. “What about when you tried to run my friends down? They—we’d just _moved here_! You had _no reason_ to… like, you just have to make everything _your_ business and start causing trouble!”

“I’m your _babysitter_. That _unfortunately_ makes you _MY_ business.” He gives her a long resentful look. “You don’t realise how many hits I’ve already taken for you—” 

She cuts him off by slamming her palms on the table, uses the cold wave of pain that slices up her arms and entwines with the fury in her chest to scream—“THAT’S NOT MY FAULT! THAT WAS YOUR _DAD_!” And Billy actually jerks back as if she struck him, shoulders going stiff and face impossibly tight, and she can practically see a new line of defences shuttering into place under his weakened mask, and Max doesn’t hold back.

“I never asked you to do _anything!_ I don’t know WHAT he says to you or if, if he - _hits_ \- you because of me but you—you never even tried to _talk_ to me about it! You just... _blamed_ me for something I had no control over and it’s no _fucking EXCUSE_ for going after me and my friends like that anyway! They did NOTHING to you and you tried to scare them off from the beginning because you want me to be miserable like _you_ but it’s NOT ME who’s making you miserable in the first place Billy—it’s _NEIL!_ It’s _not my fault_ that he hurts you, okay!”

She’s close to gasping by the time she finishes, inhaling great gulps of air, red faced and chest heaving, and meeting Billy’s eyes head on over the table. He’s not arguing back this time; lips pressed together in a tight line and nostrils flaring, shuddering with the breath that exits his body. He looks away first, eyebrows pinched and expression pensive, and Max tries to stifle her pants least the noise disturbs him because something… _something_ is ticking inside his head. 

A car hums quietly down their street, and she watches how his shoulder begin to droop and his lips slowly peel apart as he thinks, allowing a thin shred of light to catch his wires and reflect on the table. She realises she hasn’t seen his tongue in nearly a week, he usually can’t keep it inside his mouth, always flicking at his teeth, or wetly rolling around his chain, or just wagging between his lips in that gross obnoxious way; Dustin once said it was an _oral fixation_ and Max threatened to feed him his cap if he ever said those words regarding Billy around her ever again. 

His eyes lock onto the light shimmering on the table and kills it immediately by pressing his lips together, and his chair creaks as he slumps back into it, huffing out his irritation.

“What do you want me to say, Max?” Billy says, softer than she’d expected, reverting back to sounding tired and beat down, and Max closes her eyes as she exhales.

“Promise you’ll stop taking it out on me,” she says. “And my mom too.”

“Fine,” he says sulkily. “I promise.”

“And you can apologise to my friends as well.”

He scoffs and mutters something under his breath.

“I mean it, Billy. You—“

“Yeah, okay, _Maxine_. Just maybe like, when I can fucking _talk_ properly again, _okay?_ ” 

He waves his hand at his mouth and Max catches herself before she can turn this into another argument, bites the insides of her cheeks, and _breathes_ , reminds herself not to overreach and demand more than Billy can give in one go. _Not now, not yet_. _It takes time._

“Okay,” she whispers and nods her head, and he sighs a little gratefully.

It’s not exactly what she imagined but, it’s progress. She’ll accept that.

They spend a few seconds in quiet, letting the tension bleed slowly from the room until it doesn't feel quite so stifling anymore, and they cast each other somewhat awkward glances as if asking _what now?_ because Max never really let her daydreams get this far ahead and she's still partially grappling with the fact that he _actually_ apologized—as weak as it was—and they're stepping blindly into territory unknown to them both. She feels like one of them should say something.

Eventually growing tired of the silence Billy pushes up and away from the table, grabbing the flask and syringe, and pauses for a second, looking at her thoughtfully as if he’s reading her mind but it seems he comes up empty too. He starts to turn away.

“That stuff looks so gross,” Max observes pointlessly, eyeing up the gray slush and Billy’s lips twitch at the edges and he holds the flask out to her, shaking it in her face.

“Wanna try some?”

Her nose crinkles in disgust, batting his hand away with a grimace. “ _No_ thanks.” And he sniggers playfully before sauntering off to his room.

 

 

Her mom comes home five minutes later and Max helps her with the bags and unpacking, pulling her face at the strange quantities of food. Endless tins of soup and sachets of broth and more milkshakes and ice-cream than Neil would have ever allowed in the house—she’s pretty sure she can sweet-talk her mom into allowing her a few scoops.

“Has Billy moved yet?”

“Yeah,” Max says closing the freezer with a bit of a struggle. “He took something back to his room. He’s eating… I think?” She pressumes.

“Oh?” Her mom extracts her head from the pantry, a mixture of surprise and scepticism on her face. “Well… that’s. That’s _good.”_ She smiles a little and Max knows she’s going to check Billy’s waste bin afterwards.

She folds up the paper grocery bags and sets them to the side, watches her mom store away Billy’s weird protein shakes.

“Have you eaten?”

“Had a sandwich. Can I still go to the arcade?” She asks innocently and her mom smiles again.

“I suppose you’ll be wanting some money."

"Weeell, only if you're offering."

“Did you finish your homework?”

“Ah,” Max tilts her head, “I _started_ it,” and she _did_ , that’s not a lie—her mom gives her best ‘ _why am I not surprised’_ face and Max throws her hands together, interlocking her fingers, and brings them tight against her chest, bats her eyelashes and begs, “pleeeease? I will finish _all_ of it the second I get home. Or at least before dinner.”

Her mom raises an eyebrow, the look of a mother who knows her daughter’s _angel-face_ is as guilty as sin, but she’s a soft-touch at heart, and Max’s face breaks into a wide smile when she predictably opens her purse. “Yes!” She cheers, pumping her fist in the air, “you’re the best!”

“Hmmm, I always am when you want something,” she teases, tipping her change into her palm and inspecting it before handing it over. “Try not to spend it all at once—that’s got to last you until next week!” She calls as Max scurries to her room chanting _“thank you thank you thank you!”_.

“Do you need a ride?” She asks as she skips back through the kitchen, stamping her feet into her sneakers and zipping up her green sweatshirt, pockets secure and jingling with quarters. She pulls her hair out from beneath the collar.

“Nah, I’m good! See you later!”

She hops out the back, down the steps two at a time, and to where her BMX is leaning at the back of the garage—running her hands over the bars and testing her grip on the handles as she wheels it onto the drive. She’d begged for a new bike once the snows of winter melted and she realised skateboarding down Hawkins’ endlessly long winding roads gets tiring _real quickly_. She hugged her mom _and_ Neil when they unveiled the yellow Mongoose on her birthday last month—spent the afternoon racing it up and down Old Cherry road, weaving around potholes and reaching speeds she could only dream about on her skateboard. She was gonna be a whole new Zoomer on this.

And then April delivered some of the most depressingly stormy weather Max has ever witnessed and Neil forbade her from riding it out on the saturated tarmac after blankets of rain fell for days on end and their house shook under the force of the gales. It’s been sat unused in the garage, _teasing_ her, ever since.

Now she finally has the opportunity to admire how the paint gleams under the sunlight filtering from between the leaves and branches overhead and more than once she has to remind herself to keep her eyes on the road. She peddles hard and fast, taking advantage of the quiet and lack of cars to sail down Old Cherry, warm air whipping her cheeks as she soars past Elm St park and onto Cornwallis. There are fewer trees lining the streets here and pretty soon the sun beating down on her back has sweat accumulating around her hairline; heat trapped inside her sweatshirt growing clammy and uncomfortable. She pulls on her breaks, coming to a halt by the sidewalk, giving a moment for her calves to recover, pushing her sleeves up past her elbows and unzipping her sweatshirt to let some air under her pits; the Palace is already full of gross sticky teenagers and she doesn’t plan on becoming one herself.

It takes twenty minutes in total to reach the arcade and she has to drop her speed around the number of people and cars populating the streets closer to downtown. She spots Lucas’ and Dustin’s bikes side by side in the bike rack outside and lines her own up cautiously, still a little incredulous that people just leave their bikes unlocked around here.

The door creaks as she pushes it open, a waft of sweet popcorn and candy and sweat and _boys_ flooding her nostrils all at once. She grimaces. It’s almost like when Billy tries to use scented candles to cover up that _teenage boy_ smell in his room—not quite strong enough. She read the label on one called _Oak & Amber_ which actually smelt rather nice but tilt your head just a fraction the wrong way and you’re gonna get a draft of Billy _post_ - _workout_. He always lies around in his own grime for a little while too, _festering_ in it before he eventually drags himself off for a shower, though the smell often clings to his room until it’s overpowered by cigarettes and hairspray. Or until Neil sends him in with a garbage bag and air-freshener and tells him to _clear up this shit-sty!_ Rinse and repeat.

It’s busy inside, not that she expected any less on a Saturday, noisy with cheers and chatter and various repetitive loops of bouncy 8-bit music blaring from the machines she squeezes past, it takes her a few moments of looking around, balancing on the tips of her toes and straining her neck over the throngs of kids packed in tightly until she spots the backs of Lucas, Dustin and Will in the midst of the chaos, clustered together in front of one of her favourite games, _Galaga_. 

“Hey losers!” She calls, snaking past the bodies blocking her path. Lucas turns at the sound of her voice. “Hey,” the corner of his lips quirking fondly, “you made it!” Will looks up and smiles as she trots over.

“Hey Max,” Dustin says, eyes and attention fixed solely on the screen in front of him.

“What stage are you on?” Max asks, squeezing in beside Will and watching Dustin messily shoot down Galaga aliens.

“Ten,” Dustin says, blinking robotically, a look of sheer concentration resting on his face. “Stop talking.” Max grins.

“Pretty low score,” she observes, casually concealing her smugness. “No lives left…”

“Yes thank you Captain Obvious.” 

“Are you starting to buckle under pressure?”

“I think he’s been feeling it for a while,” Will laughs. 

“This is not your best game,” Lucas agrees, shaking his head in mock disappointment.

“Shut up shut up shut up!” Dustin demands, slamming at the controls forcefully and dodging a rain of enemy fire, “give a man some space! You’re suffocating me here!” and Max can practically see the gameplay reflecting off the gloss of sweat across his forehead. 

“You’re sweating,” she says, chuckling, just as Dustin shrieks, “ _goddamn it, stay still, DIE, you little… SHIIIT!”_ and aggressively tugs the control stick to the left, narrowly avoiding one diving alien, only to run directly into another, his spacecraft exploding in a burst of pixelated flames.

“Aaaaaand he’s out!” Lucas jeers as GAME OVER slides across the screen and Dustin throws his hands in the air.

“You put me _off._ If Max hadn’t—”

“Ah you can’t blame her, you lost all your lives before she got here,” Will points out and Max smiles sweetly.

“Why don’t you let me show you how it’s done? Amateur,” she adds, pushing in a quarter and shrugging out of her jacket. She uses the sleeves to secure it around her waist.

“Oh yeah?” Dustin challenges, folding his arms over the edge of the machine and leaning into her space. He takes off his cap and wipes down his brow with his sleeve before sitting it back on his head. “Let’s see how you do while I’m talking in your ear, seems only fair.”

Max presses start, positions her fingers over the controls **,** _player 1, stage 1,_ “fine by me,” she says confidently and starts firing the second the Galaga forces descend from the top of the screen.  She wipes out the first row easily. “Where’s Mike by the way?”

Will starts to says, “dunno. Said he’d be—“

“Hey Max? MAX?  Let me tell you about my day, okay—“ Dustin starts prattling in her ear. “—Okay. I got up just before eight, and I had Count Chocula in my favourite Hulk bowl. Milk first, then cereal—“

“Sign of a psychopath,” Lucas mutters somewhere close to her ear and Max laughs under her breath.

“—I finished _all_ the homework Mr Clark gave us, did you finish yours? Max, did you finish your homework? Max? Are you listening, Max?” He blows gently on her cheek and the only reason she doesn’t head-butt him is because she’s an _experienced_ player, invulnerable to all means of distraction. “I fed Yertle and then I went to the grocery store with my mom—“

“Wow you’re really living it wild these days.”

“—and I picked up the best Mother’s Day card for Steve, he’s gonna love it, it’s one of those real sappy ones. I’ve signed your name in it by the way… … Was that a _‘thank you, Dustin’_ I hear? You’re welcome, Max. I’m a thoughtful guy. Even though you didn’t chip in for the mug I thought it was best to let Steve know all his children love him—“

“Are you finished yet?” She smirks and shakes her head, eyes never leaving the screen, “you won’t put me off,” she’s already on stage 7, “and Will—you were _saying_ before Dustin so _rudely_ interrupted?”

She can feel Dustin pouting at her. He calls it a scowl but it’s not, it’s a pout.

“What was I saying?” Will asks confused.

“About Mike?”

“Oh. Yeah. There’s not actually much to say… said he’d be here right after lunch,” in her peripheral she sees him check his wristwatch, “no sign of him.”

She bumps up another level, collecting her bonus points, and she assumes he’s just trying to distract her again when Dustin suddenly says, “hey what happened here?” and pokes at her arm.

She squirms the second time he does it— _“quit it!”—_ jabs her elbow at him, convinced he’s just desperate and jealous because she’s about to smash his last score with two lives left, but then Lucas leans around to peer at where Dustin’s finger is pointed and exclaims, “wh _oaaa_ what did you _do!_ ” and Max’s frowns at the astonished tone in his voice, shivers at the brush of his fingers, smooth and gentle, tracing circles lightly over her arm, and her concentration slips, eyes boring past the Galaga aliens she’s supposed to be destroying and fixing on the silhouette of his head reflecting on the dark screen.

“Does that _hurt?”_ Dustin asks and pokes her on the same spot again, and Max flinches, _realising_ , and her eyes blink back into focus just in time to see her space shuttle go up in flames. “Whoops.”

She slams her palm down next to controller exhaling angrily as she turns to Dustin with a pinched glare on her face and pokes him in the chest, pleased when he rocks back under just the pressure of her finger. She pokes him again. “Stop”—poke—“poking”—poke—“me”—one last poke.

“Holy shit,” Will exclaims from behind her, “Max that looks _painful,”_ and Max huffs, shoulders drooping a little; she feels Lucas’s eyes on the bruise when she turns back to the console and she flicks her hair over her shoulder self-consciously.

“Doesn’t hurt,” she mumbles.

“What happened?”

She shrugs. “Accident last night.”

“Huh,” Lucas hums, “a Billy kind of accident?” And Max sighs.

She should know by now she can’t shake him off with just a couple of dismissive comments, not when he’s worried, which has been like, every day this week, and honestly it’s _nice_ , she likes that he cares, but off-loading her troubles onto other people still doesn’t always come easy or naturally.

“It _was_ an accident,” she says truthfully, “he knocked into me but, he was sort of puking at the same time so—“

“He puked on you?” Dustin asks disgusted.

“ _No_ , he puked on _himself_ —“

Dustin sniggers. Max throws him a look. His grin drops. “I mean. That’s terrible,” he says flatly and before Max can open her mouth she’s distracted by a long drawn out note from the game signalling she’d been hit again.

“Oh great, thanks a lots,” she snaps, now she has no lives left.

“…Not so easy when everyone’s talking in your ear is it?” Dustin says.

“Nobody _poked_ you or asked you about your messy step-brother though did they?”

“Sorry,” Lucas says quickly, “I was just worried,” and Max deflates almost immediately, because _yes_ , it’s _sweet_ how much he cares but if she keeps making him worry like this he’s gonna go gray or lose all his hair before they even make it to high school, _if_ he manages to put up with her that long.

“It’s fine, really,” she says, forcefully removing the bite from her tone.. “I didn’t mean to snap.” She wiggles the joystick back and forth, taps quickly on the fire button and knocks several aliens down, but they’re descending faster now and she’s losing her momentum.

They watch quietly as she scrapes through a few more levels, gasping a few _oooh_ ’s and _ahhh_ ’s as she just barely escapes collision several times, and she knows there definitely won’t be any high-scores made here but she’s determined to at least overtake Dustin’s previous score before she wipes out—a point still needs to be proved.

“So... if Billy’s mouth is all wired shut then how exactly did he _throw up_ , because—“

“Ew, _seriously_ Dustin?”

“No! Just listen! If his teeth at like _this_ —“ she hears his teeth click together, “—then how—how does that _work?_ Like where does all the vom go?”

“I don’t wanna _know_ ,” Lucas whines.

“Did he have to _swallow_ it? Or did he like—“ he’s… doing something _weird_ next to her, leaning forwards and flailing his hands in front of his face, and she grits her teeth, “—suck it out from his gums and spit—“

“This is why you don’t have a girlfriend,” Lucas says.

“Hey!”

“Just trust me okay. It was messy and it went everywhere,” Max interrupts quickly, eyes squinting in concentration. “You don’t need any more details than that. Oh _shit_ —“ She drops her hands uselessly to her side as the ending music chimes and her stats begin to total up.

“That’s a lousy score.”

“Still better than you,” she shoots back. “Who’s going next?”

Will digs his hand in his pockets for his change and Dustin groans, “those same guys have been hoarding Dig Dug for over an hour now! It’s called SHARING DICKWADS!”

“Dustin shut the fuck up!”

“GUYS!”

The door to the arcade swings open violently, slamming into a fire-extinguisher with a resounding _clang_ , and everyone startles at once as Mike comes barrelling through the threshold, face-flushed and out of breath.

“GUYS! BIG NEWS!”

Max is pretty sure he stands on at least six feet and almost sends two people sprawling before he makes it over.

“You’ll never guess—”

“Hey Wheeler, quit causing a ruckus!” Keith, with his cheese dust covered fingers, comes slouching over to them.

“I’m not causing a ruckus I just _got_ here?” Mike says as if half the room aren’t giving him the stink-eye.

“And you came through the door screaming like you just witnessed—“

“Can you just go away?” Mike says rudely, and Max groans.

“You’re gonna get us kicked out, idiot.”

“Watch it Wheeler,” Keith threats lazily, “I’m in charge round here and I can ban you if I want.”

“Ban me for _what?_ Asking for a little privacy so I can talk to my friends?” Mike argues and Max closes her eyes, wishes a sniper would just take her out.

Someone bumps into her shoulder. “Hey are you done using this?” And Will barely manages to stutter a startled ‘ _uhhh?’_ before two boys, older and taller, muscle their way past him and claim their stake on Galaga.

“Hey!”

They ignore her, and Max bristles. “Hey assholes. We were still playing!”

“It’s fine,” Will says.

“It’s not fine! We—“

“—and keep your voices _down._ That includes you too, Max!” Keith calls and she gapes at his retreating back.

“They’re down!” Dustin insists, holding his palms up in peace, “everyone’s quiet, everyone’s calm, okay? Okay. Mike. Big news. Go ahead.”

“Not _here_!” Mike hisses, looking around conspicuously like he wasn’t yelling only a second ago. He ushers them to the back corner of the arcade where an old pacman game sits with an _out of order_ sign slapped over its dusty screen. Max rolls her eyes, drags her feet along the thin carpet, popcorn crunching beneath her sneakers, and considers that Mike may actually steal the crown for Most Dramatic person she knows from Billy.

“Okay, will you stop drawing this out,” Dustin groans, “If this is about—“

“It’s _El!_ ”

“El?” Lucas repeats.

“El?” Max also repeats but no one looks at her.

“Of course,” Dustin sighs, “El.”

“Yeah! We were talking _all night_ —”

“What so exciting about that? You talk _every_ night.”

“What?” Mike pulls a face. “No we don’t?”

“Mike,” Lucas begins slowly, “we all switched to a different channel so we don’t have to listen to it. It’s gross.”

“It’s not _that_ gross, it’s kind of sweet even,” and Max thinks she deserves some credit here, she’s defending Mike of all people, and she tries not to feel dejected when they talk right over her.

“Is that why none of you were answering last night?” Mike demands.

“There’s a thing called a telephone—“

“Will you just shut up and listen!” Oh boy, some days Max could punch him right in the face. She clicks her teeth but leans in anyway when he lowers his voice to barely above a whisper. “El. She’s safe now. Like, from the _government_ , they’ve cleared out of the area completely so she doesn’t need to hide anymore—“

“Then why are we discussing this in a corner like a bunch of weirdos?” Lucas whispers back mockingly.

“Well we can’t just go yelling about it!” Mike says, loud. “We’ve still gotta be y’know, _cautious_ —but guys this is huge! We got our Mage back! I was starting to think Hopper was gonna lock her up all summer—“

“I’m pretty sure he’s just trying to keep her safe,” Will says, annoyed, arms crossing and shoulder hunching a little. “What took you so long to get here if you couldn’t wait to tell us?”

“I wanted to tell you last night, but nobody answered, and then me and El, we just got caught up talking. She’s got so much to _experience—“_

And Dustin points at Mike and says, “like your tongue?” Max gags.

“Oh shit, does this mean we have to watch you sucking on each other face’s every time we hang out from now on?” Lucas groans, a pained expression sweeping across his face like it only gets worse the longer he thinks about it.

"As if you can say anything! You get to see your girlfriend _everyday_ —"

"I'm standing _right here_ ," Max says.

"—am I not allowed to be happy I can finally see mine?" Mike continues, looking almost betrayed. “I thought you guys would be thrilled!”

"We are thrilled okay? We’re all happy to have El back,” Lucas says and Max nods along like her stomach isn’t twisting uncertainly with the news. She’s not sure how happy El will be to see her in person, she seems to have accepted Max’s presence but she’s never addressed her personally when they’ve all been on the talkies together, and the others visited her at some point in the past few months, mostly Mike, but Lucas, Dustin, Will and his family sweet-talked Hopper into letting them spend a day or an afternoon keeping El company. Max felt too uncomfortable to ask and she was never invited so seven months on and they’re still basically strangers.

She pretends that doesn’t bother her.

“Well good, because she wants to see you guys so I said we’d hang out next Saturday at my place, I thought it’d be cool to hang out in the basement again, like when we were hiding her—“

God, Max just feels _awkward_. She wonders if ‘ _you guys’_ was being used in gender-neutral way, or if it meant you _guys_ as if the not _her_ , just the boys and their _mage._ She shifts her weight, smiling along pleasantly even though it hurts her cheeks after a while. _Suck it up_. This is a _good_ thing, a _happy_ thing, for El—the girl who _saved the world_.

Don’t make it about _you_.

“—and once summer starts we can hang out all the time. I mean, Hopper seems a bit paranoid about her going in crowded places just yet, but when the mall—“

“ _Dragon’s Lair is free!”_ Dustin suddenly screeches and dives through their circle to claim it, jostling Mike and—thankfully—putting an end to his lovesick rambling with a disgruntled _‘hey!’_ He chases after Lucas’s heels, bitching under his breath, and Max lets her face relax for a minute while she follows behind Will.

They spread out after a while, jumping at their favourite games as soon as they become available, and Max tries to escape her thoughts in the noise and blinking screens—and earn back some of her dignity after an abysmal start—because that’s what she came here for in the first place—to _relax_. And yet she feels more stressed out by the minute, the look of contempt El gave her the night they met flashing unwelcomely in the back of her mind, and she worries her lip between her teeth, tries to think what she might have done _wrong_ and how she can change that. Except she can’t figure out where she messed up, she was _excited_ to meet El and El just… ignored her. Hated her maybe. The possibility that she still does has Max’s stomach tying itself in knots. What if El doesn’t want her around? It’s not like she expects the guys to just up and kick her out of the party—well Mike would probably consider it, for El—but Max doesn’t want to be a cause of tension either and if it came down to it, a Mage is more valuable than a Zoomer. And El was here first.

She wipes out again on Galaga, sighing in frustration and shuffling the remaining coins in her pocket, she's gone through half of the change her mom gave her and even if she still holds the leadership board Dustin has beaten her on every game so far and keeps shooting her this smug shit-eating grin every time she looks up. A little down from her Will is playing pinball with Mike hanging by his side, his mouth going a mile a minute—“ _El, El, El”—_ and judging by the way Will keeps frowning and biting his lip it looks like he might be reaching the ends of his patience and honestly, Max kinda feels the same. 

"Hey I'm gonna head on home…"

"What?" Lucas blinks. "Already?"

"Yeah, I still need to do my homework, told my mom I'd have it done by dinner…"

"Shoulda done it last night," Dustin quips unhelpfully and Max can't even be bothered to argue with him.

"Yeah, well, I didn't," she says with little bite. She doesn't mention that she actually tried to do it, or that Billy interrupted her, or that he apologized either, because that's still her little secret, and she doubts the news will be received without a generous dose of scepticism for which she doesn’t have the energy to argue with. 

She bids them farewell until Monday with promises that she will radio if there are any 'problems' and escapes outside, sucking in a great gulp of fresh air and pulling her bike from the rack. She walks it across the street, eyes tearing from the floor long enough to check for traffic, and hops on once she’s safely across, casting one last glance behind her with a sigh. She didn’t mean to be a party-pooper, all she wanted to do was enjoy some time with her friends and forget all the crap going on at home, and yet just the mention of El squashed her spirit and has her running because apparently she’s too self-centred to keep her discontent off her face even for her friends.

 _Wow,_ she thinks gloomily, _I’m a real bitch_.

 

 

 

Despite her promises Max doesn’t even glance at her homework until after eight when she’s stuffed full of pizza rolls and ice-cream and feeling the full weight of her mom’s famous _disappointed-yet-unsurprised_ frown.

She flops out on her bed, belly down and propped up by her elbows, workbook spread open under her face, and uses every ounce of self-discipline she possesses—which admittedly isn’t a lot—to focus and channel Mr Clark’s ‘ _exercise you mind!’_ mantra. At least when she’s grappling with algebra equations she’s not imagining a hundred different scenarios where she ends up being pushed out of the party.

"What you doing?"

She jumps at his voice, whipping her head around to find Billy at her door, leaning in a relaxed manner against the frame and watching her with a contemplative yet unthreatening expression, keeping his toes out in the hallway. A twinge of suspicion ripples up her neck and she almost rolls her eyes and growls ' _what’s it look like dumbass'_ because after five hours of self-piteous brooding she’s feeling a little _too_ testy and Billy’s _always_  up for a fight. She doesn’t however, because that would be _unproductive_ and _irrational_ especially after all the screaming it took to get them to this tentative truce.

Instead she gives him a pointed look, “my math homework,” and his fingers twitch in his pockets.

If she squints and applies a little imagination then he actually looks _sort-of_ guilty.

He stands there awkwardly for a moment, one foot making to leave while the other remains firmly planted, some internal conflict briefly washing over his face, and his eyes flick around unsurely.

“Do you need any help?” He asks eventually and Max is pretty sure her eyebrows touch her hairline.

Before, such an offer might have had her clutching her book to her chest, paranoia garnered from experience insisting that this is a trick of some sort—a responsible _brotherly_ gesture to disguise the condescending smirks and cruel taunts whispered in her ear, ‘ _stupid little Maxie, do you even know how to count past ten?’—_ but she’s familiar enough with Billy to know he wouldn’t bother with the semi-respectful facade without Neil around to witness it.

Which mean he’s being genuine, and that quite frankly is weirder, and also a little frightening—to push down her instinct, because he’s putting some part of himself out there, and Max knows if she wants this even stand a chance of working then she's going to have to meet him halfway.

“Yeah, sure,” she says, and he nods, slipping off the doorframe and stepping inside her room, and she pushes herself up off her elbows, tucking her knees beneath her and scooting down her bed to make room for him.

She can’t recall ever inviting him to sit in her room before.

He sinks down next to her, mattress dipping under his weight, and she smells cheap soap and shampoo, and close up she can see his hair is slightly damp. He rotates her book and paper to face him, and she watches curiously as he skims over the answers already filled in, the light from her lamp illuminating his skin with a warm glow and casting shadows beneath his thick lashes. From this angle he looks almost normal—healthy if not a little tired, and her heart gives a painful throb, remembering Neil swings with his right and the other side of Billy’s face is still swollen and discoloured.

She swallows. It must be uncomfortable, even with his meds, and she’s not sure how many of those he’s managed to worm out of her mom today. She wants to ask if it hurts. If he sleeps okay and if he’s lonely and so many other questions.

“Are you feeling better?” She begins, tracing circles atop her duvet with her fingers. “I mean… after…” _last night. Hopper. The hospital. His dad._ She isn’t sure which is the safest topic so she opts to let him decide.

“Mmm,” he hums ambiguously without looking up. “Don’t feel sick anymore.”

She smiles. “Well that’s good to know my bedsheets are safe.” He snorts.

“I woulda just puked on you.”

“And _I_ would beat you to death with my math book for even _trying_ ,” Max challenges with a laugh and it’s embarrassing how her heart dares to flutter so hopefully. _Traitor._

“Then who would help you with your homework?”

“I was managing just _fine.”_

He corks an eyebrow. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah!”

"Hate to break it to you but half of these are wrong," he says bluntly with a smirk, and for a split second Max’s back goes rigid, the smile on her face faltering because she’s stupid and bad at math and she should have done her homework last night like Dustin said because now Billy’s _laughing_ at her—

“Here…”

He eases the pencil she’s threatening to snap in half from her fist and flashes her this charmingly self-assured smile that only _he_ could pull off with a mouth all wrapped up in ugly metal.

“I’ll show you,” he says and he starts at the top, walks her through each equation and shows her exactly where she’s gone wrong and how to correct it, and it ends up taking forever because Billy gets winded when he speaks for too long and some words get muffled behind his teeth, but gradually Max’s spine slackens until she’s leaning close to him, elbow on her knee and chin cradled in her palm, nodding her head along in agreement even though she doesn’t retain a good chunk of what he’s saying but—

It’s nice.

As nice as math is ever going to be. And she forgives Mr Clark for the homework dump only because she gets this moment out of it.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It took forever until I was satisfied with the first scene between Max and Billy, and I accidentally smashed the screen on my laptop rip
> 
> So sorry this chapter is late! Tell me what you think!
> 
> Tumblr @cherry-toxic
> 
> (Title taken from Hatebreed's Before the Fight Ends You)


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